Jose Mourinho has again been in sparkling form in his latest press-conference and has opened another interesting war of words with his old nemesis Arsene Wenger. The Arsenal manager had previously claimed teams who play down their chances of winning the premier league are doing it because of ‘fear of failure’ earlier the same day. Mourinho responded emphatically by claiming that Arsene Wenger himself is a ‘specialist in failure’.
The Arsenal manager has already tasted many of Mourinho’s biggest sound bites in destabilizing his opponents and responding to every critic that comes over his side from any manager out there. We all remember when Mourinho called Arsene Wenger a ‘voyeur’ years ago in his first reign but, let’s read his quotes here….
‘Wenger is a specialist in failure. I’m not,’ said Mourinho at his Friday press conference. ‘If he is right it is because I don’t fail many times. Eight years without a trophy is failure. The reality is he is a specialist. Eight years without a piece of silverware, that’s failure. If that was me I would not come back to London. I’m not fearing anything in football.’
This comment was sparked by Arsene Wenger’s earlier press conference in which he said when asked about title rivals (specifically Mourinho) playing down their chances of winning the league, “It’s a fear to fail. If you’re not in the race you cannot lose it, if you declare yourself not in the race you cannot lose it, simple as that.”
The two managers surely don’t have love lost between them through out Jose Mourinho’s time away from England and his return has yet sparked a renewed rivalry and war of words along with other challengers’ manager Manuel Pellegrini who is new to England.
Speaking of tomorrow’s FA Cup showdown between Manchester City and his side, Mourinho claimed he doesn’t want a replay at Stamford Bridge for second leg since it will prove difficult in spicing up the fixture pile-up. He also claimed that Manchester City’s key players missing the previous win at the Etihad didn’t make much of a difference since they had a strong squad and those players had played the first time we beat them at Stamford bridge.
‘People can say that they missed players like Fernandinho and Sergio Aguero but, the first time we played them, they were playing and we beat them. ‘ – Jose Mourinho
Jose Mourinho also discussed the availability and fitness of two of our centre-backs’:
‘John (Terry) is not back. I think Cahill is out,’ reported Mourinho. ‘He injured his calf against West Brom. He tried to train today but he didn’t finish the training session in the best conditions. He is going for a scan to be sure if he can or he can’t (play).’
Mourinho is the undisputed master of the mind games and succeeding while Arsene and Pellegrini are well the opposite as it looks as they never had won a trophy in the past 8 years while the latter has none to speak of so far in his career even though he has unrivaled experiance in La Liga and is a master tactician both qualities that Jose can boast as well. We at Chelsea should enjoy the luck and privilege of having the best all around manager in the world at the club where he is ‘loved the most’. He is at home and he is here to win. Next chapter will be advancing over the favorites of the trophy Man City in the FA Cup tomorrow and the journey to Wembley (our second home) is on.
