The sun was setting in south London as José Mourinho spoke outside Crystal Palace’s new media centre. With his jacket draped over an arm and a smile across his face, the Portuguese gave the impression that he feels his team are invincible, yet he would go on to insist that is not the case. Chelsea, their manager is sure, will be beaten between now and May.
Mourinho’s pessimism is understandable given it is a decade since a team went through an entire Premier League campaign undefeated. However, few sides seem as capable of matching Arsenal’s feat of 2003-04 as the current leaders, who following their triumph over Palace have won seven of their opening eight matches and drawn what on paper appears to be the most difficult fixture they will face all season — a visit to the champions, Manchester City.
Quite simply, Chelsea have the talent, desire and strength in numbers to become the Invincibles II, traits which were all on show during Saturday’s triumph. Crucially they also have the manager, with Mourinho coming as close as anyone to matching Arsenal when he led Chelsea to the title in the 2004–05 season, his first in charge at Stamford Bridge, with just one league loss. Yet it is the 51-year-old, a man hardly lacking in confidence and claims of greatness, who is ruling out Chelsea’s chances of making history.
“No, no, no,” Mourinho replied when asked if his team could remain undefeated this season. “This is the Premier League and in this moment, 10 years after the last one to do it, football has changed so much, and the Premier League has changed so much that it’s impossible to do it.”
Mourinho could be bluffing – saying one thing in public while believing another in private, or it could be that he sees domestic defeats as an inevitable part of his ambition to win a first Champions League title at Chelsea, with the club resuming their participation in the competition against Maribor on Tuesday.
Either way the manager is stressing caution, but after such a blistering start to the season he cannot fully hide his belief in this Chelsea side. He praised their “big balls” after overcoming Palace, with brilliant goals by Oscar and Cesc Fàbregas either side of the interval seeing the visitors win a game in which both teams had a player sent off. And Mourinho took particular delight in the fact the three points were secured without the top-scorer Diego Costa, whose hamstring injury could see him also miss the visit of Maribor as well as Sunday’s trip to Manchester United.
“There is a feeling that our team improved because of Diego,” Mourinho said. “It’s right to say that, but at the same time this team had a big improvement. We come here and impose our game. We had the ball, we passed the ball, we moved the ball. They [Palace] had two or three situations in the first couple of minutes and after that everything is under control.
“We are reaching that level [of Mourinho’s 2005 and 2006 title-winning Chelsea sides]. In my first spell we had players with great maturity and knowledge. Last year my team was naive, so we work and in this moment I am happy. We are not a perfect team but this is a better team.”
Palace can testify to that having beaten Chelsea at home last season but rarely if ever looking capable of doing the same on Saturday. Nevertheless the home side can take encouragement from how they played, having started positively and finished the same way when the impressive Fraizer Campbell converted Wilfried Zaha’s 90th-minute cross. Ultimately for Palace it was a case of what might have been had Damien Delaney not collected a needless second yellow card just three minutes after César Azpilicueta was dismissed for a studs-up tackle on Mile Jedinak.
“It’s about learning and the plus for me was how we played,” the Palace manager, Neil Warnock, said. “We’ve now got important games against West Brom and Sunderland coming up. Getting anything against Chelsea would have been a bonus.”
Man of the match Oscar (Chelsea)