Mourinho lauds 'complete' display

26 November 2014 07:31

Jose Mourinho believes his side are treating Chelsea fans to a brand of flair-filled football they have never seen before as the Blues cantered into the last 16 of the Champions League at the expense of Schalke.

Much of the pre-match talk surrounded Schalke coach Roberto Di Matteo coming up against the team he guided to success in this competition back in 2012 - a feat Mourinho has yet to match during either of his two spells at Stamford Bridge.

But it was the visitors who were celebrating in Gelsenkirchen as they romped to a 5-0 victory to ease through Group G with one game to spare.

Skipper John Terry opened the scoring with a second-minute header before Willian added a second and Jan Kirchhoff headed into his own goal to put Chelsea further clear before the break.

Didier Drogba, the man whose penalty kick sealed the trophy for Di Matteo's side in Munich, came off the bench to score the fourth and set up a fifth for Ramires as the Blues equalled their biggest ever away win Europe.

And Mourinho was left praising their efforts and feels he is delivering a new brand of football to the west London club.

"I don't remember Chelsea playing in this way away from home," he said.

"Obviously, great victories away from home with me, with Roberto.even with other managers.

"But this was very impressive. Very complete. I know, because I know the media, probably you are going to say Schalke were not good, they made mistakes, but the reality is any team that played against us would feel it was very difficult. The players played a fantastic match.

"The players are very serious. Everything they do with big focus and ambition, but at the same time with this component, which is quite something new at Chelsea: this happiness, this flair, this beauty.

"The way they are doing things, we are very happy. We are having good results and playing really, really well at this moment."

With Champions League progression sewn up and a six-point lead at the top of the Premier League, plaudits are easy to come by for Chelsea at the moment.

But, although he was left purring with his side's performance, Mourinho knows they must build on their unbeaten start to the season to stake their claims as one of the great teams.

"In this moment, this team is completely different to my team from 2004-08," he added.

"Completely different. Different players. Different profile. So we play a different football. As I was saying, this team, to be so good or better than other Chelsea teams?

"This team needs to win. At this moment: zero titles. We have to transform the quality of our game into results, which we are getting now. But we have to try and win things so this team goes down in Chelsea's history as a brilliant team who won something."

Mourinho also confirmed Diego Costa was replaced by Drogba due to a leg injury - but does bot believe the Spain international will be forced to miss Saturday's trip to Sunderland.

For his part, Di Matteo insisted ahead of the game that he would not go into the fixture with any sort of sentimentality.

The Italian was sacked by Roman Abramovich just six months after delivering the club's maiden European Cup but is now looking to rebuild his reputation in Germany.

This was his first defeat on home soil since taking the job in early October and he admitted it was the most difficult loss to swallow in his managerial career to date.

"Yes," he said when asked if the defeat was the most painful he had suffered.

"It is certainly a disappointing night for us in terms of the scoreline, and also the way we played. But we did play against a really great team tonight. If you concede too much space and time to those players, they'll exploit that.

"It was a difficult game. If you concede a goal in the second minute from a set-play, of course it doesn't help. We paid them too much respect, weren't aggressive enough, we didn't put enough pressure on them, and they were ice cold. It was a super, clinical performance from them."

Source: PA