Jose Mourinho says he wants Chelsea to play with a higher intensity and “destroy” teams during his first season back in charge of the club, but warned that he is expecting a difficult challenge against Aston Villa tonight.
Mourinho watched his side secure a comfortable 2-0 victory over Hull City on the opening weekend of the Premier League campaign, but the Portuguese believes the level of performance from his side tailed off in the second half.
Oscar and Frank Lampard put Chelsea in the driving seat against Hull with two first-half goals. Despite their early dominance, however, the home side could not capitalise on their momentum and turn the result into a thrashing, something Mourinho is keen to rectify.
“We want to win matches, but what I like is that when you have the chance to destroy, to beat them by three, four or five, we have to do it,” said Mourinho.
“If someone has the chance to do it to you, they will not forgive you, they will give you nothing. If we [raise the intensity], we destroy an opponent, we get a much bigger result because going that way you have to score goals. If you keep going in the same direction you will score, score one more and probably score one more and kill the game.
“I think our three players behind Fernando disappeared. They went down but because the score was 2-0. I didn’t want to make the change immediately but you could tell when I put Schurrle and Lukaku it gave the team a little push and made a difference. I don’t think we did that intentionally because at half time we spoke about starting the second-half in the same direction and killing the game, but we couldn’t.”
Villa come into the game high on confidence following an impressive 3-1 victory at Arsenal on Saturday. Christian Benteke scored twice for Paul Lambert's side who struggled last season but were dangerous opponents away from home.
Add key player
Chelsea, who will again be without David Luiz for tonight's game, still hope to add one key player to their ranks before the transfer window closes at the end of the month, although Mourinho insists he has a "plan B and plan C" should he fail in his pursuit of the Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney.
He denied that Arsene Wenger is under pressure following Villa’s victory at the Emirates – “he has big stability . . . . he is the one who is close to Sir Alex Ferguson’s profile in the sense that he has been at the club for such a long time” – and Mourinho also believes Lambert’s side have the ability to upset anyone in the Premier League.
He said: “They are a good team so it is not such a big drama, they can beat any one of the contenders.”
On his own side, Mourinho claimed that he did not need to spend vast amounts of money to see improvements. “It is not just about intensity. It is also about other things and I need my team to work, I need my team to improve other aspects of their game,” he said.
“But I was especially pleased because you can change the profile of a team by adding lots of new players and that has the consequence of changing the profile.
"Another thing is to change the profile of a team with the same players and I think, for a manager, I would say more for a coach, somebody who trains the players on the pitch like I like to do, it's very, very good. It's a very, very good feeling," added Mourinho.
Guardian Service
