Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas have completed Chelsea’s title-winning jigsaw, Jose Mourinho predicts.
While Blues boss Mourinho opted not to forecast his Londonerswill wrest back the title for the first time since 2010, the Portuguese believes his new Spanish duo will make the vital difference.
Chelsea splashed out £32million for Costa, another £27m for Fabregas and also £16m for Brazilian left-back Filipe Luis, bolstering a squad which lost David Luiz, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole as well as misfiring Samuel Eto’o and Demba Ba.
For Mourinho, overseeing pre-season preparations from Chelsea’s Alpine training base on the banks of Austria's Lake Worthersee, it guarantees a side which has righted the wrongs that cost them the crown in May.
“We felt last season that we had a team,” said Mourinho. “Not a super team but a team - fighting for the title, in the Champions League semi-final...
“But from mid-season we were feeling that we needed critical, surgical new players. Instead of buying seven or eight, we made a very early decision to go and attack the three points where we felt we needed a real improvement.
“First was the striker. During the whole season, the first away goal one of my strikers scored was at Southampton, on New Years’ Day.
“Fernando (Torres) got three, Ba a couple, Eto’o didn’t score a single goal away from home.
“From January, we felt that we could get Diego. We had to meet the release clause and make him believe a move to us was the right move.”
Right, it seems, for both parties.
“I’ve known Diego since he came to Portugal from Brazil at the age of 17,” added the Chelsea manager. “He is a guy whose life was not easy, nobody gave him anything for free and he always had to fight a lot. He is afraid of nothing, ready for everything.
“What jumps immediately when you see him is his physical and psychological profile. It’s immediate, a big, strong guy, using his body, attacking spaces, holding up the ball and pressing people.
“But he’s much more than that. His movement is incredible, the intelligence is amazing, the choices he makes in terms of movement is fantastic.
“The guy is a real top striker and he’s already shocked players like Branislav Ivanovic and John Terry because they now know it’s not just about his physical presence.
“In the air he’s not as good as [the returning] Didier Drogba was when he came here but he’s more experienced. At Atletico he made people forget [the club's former strikers] Sergio Aguero and Radamel Falcao.
“He is ready. He doesn’t need a mentor. He is a made player - an end product, a complete striker. A mature guy who told me he’s here thanks to his legs and to his heart - he has had to fight for everything.
“Last season, we lost the title with the defeats at Palace, Stoke, Newcastle and Everton. Will it be a problem for Diego to play at Palace or Stoke? Not at all - I think they will be the matches he will most enjoy.”
Likewise, Mourinho, who said “one of the foreign players” - presumably goalkeeper Petr Cech - will have to go before the transfer window shuts, feels his other acquisitions will make a difference:
“We needed a player for the midfield with a different footballistic profile and a pure left-back - a real left-back. I explained to Fabregas the move was perfect for him, while Filipe gives us more solutions because we can switch Azpilicueta [to right-back] and play Ivanovic at centre-back if we want to.
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“Fabregas is a player of control. He’s a player that wants the ball, a player that needs the ball. It means in those away matches we lost last season we will have much more control of the game and much more initiative than we had before.”
Mourinho has already bucked the Chelsea trend under Russian owner Roman Abramovich - a pattern which saw any “failed” manager, even those who had previously delivered silverware, jettisoned with no compunction.
Yet even he probably cannot afford another third-place finish.
“I have the squad I want to have, the right profile to attack the title,” he said. “Arsenal, Liverpool, United and City are all signing players and Tottenham are improving. But I start the season saying we want to be champions.
“I don’t like not to win. I don’t like it. Finishing third last season was good, but I was not happy.
“We will go to win the title. We will go for that.
"But this is not Spain or Germany. This is not a league of two.
“So we know what we want to do. We know what we have to do, to do better, to improve.
“We play [newly-promoted] Burnley in the first game. It is a big match, no different from five weeks later, when we go [champions Manchester] City. That’s the mentality I want to have in the team.”