Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is the Craig Bellamy of football managers. He could have a fight with himself in a telephone box! A couple of weeks ago Mourinho and Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini exchanged words, and now the “Speicial One” has turned his attention on Arsene Wenger who he called “a specialist in failure”.
In his usual Friday morning press conference, Wenger said that the Premier League title is Chelsea’s to lose and that anyone who claims their team are not in the race does so out of fear of failure.
“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” said Wenger.
“I think just that our job is to be ambitious and to try to win, if we do not win to take full responsibility for that. That’s as simple as that and that’s how I see it.
“I say yes we are in it, yes we will have a go for it, we will absolutely give everything to go for it and if we don’t do I will take responsibility for it, but I just see it like that.”
Mourinho, who has repeatedly played down Chelsea’s chances of winning the Premier League this season, cold not let that jab from Wenger go unchallenged and responded by saying:
“He is a specialist in failure. I’m not,” said Mourinho. “If supposedly he is right and I’m afraid to fail, it’s because I haven’t failed many times.
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m not used to failing. The reality is he is a specialist. Eight years without a piece of silverware – that’s failure. If I do that at Chelsea, eight years, I leave London and I don’t come back.”
This is just the latest exchange of handbags between Wenger and Mourinho, who battled several times during Mourinho’s first stint at Stamford Bridge when Mourinho made headlines for calling Wenger a voyeur saying:
“I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur,” said the Portuguese coach. “He likes to watch other people.
“There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea.”
