Mourinho mocks Wenger for making 'political' excuses in defeat
Jose Mourinho last night intensified his ongoing feud with Arsène Wenger by claiming Arsenal have been "very intelligent" in the way their public image has been projected amid failure on the pitch and suggested the Arsenal manager too readily uses the progress of his young players as an excuse in the wake of defeats.Arsenal's season is all but over with more than two months still remaining. They were eliminated from the Champions League by PSV Eindhoven, lost to Chelsea in the Carling Cup final, were knocked out of the FA Cup by Blackburn Rovers and remain 20 points adrift of the Premiership leaders Manchester United. Mourinho feels that if his side had endured such a sequence of results stronger condemnation would ensue.
"At the start of every season we say we want to win trophies," he said. "If we win matches and trophies we have success. If we don't win matches then we don't have the success we are waiting for.
"I do not say 20 times that against Porto in the last 16 of the Champions League, for example, we finished the game with three boys aged 20; we are not these kind of people. If they have a player aged 20, 19, 18 or 34 that is not the point. If we play very, very, very well and don't win that is not the point. We have a direct approach to win and suffer the consequences of that when things are not going well."
The Chelsea manager believes Wenger projects Arsenal's image in a "political way" to ensure failure reduces the damage done to his players. "I think they are very intelligent in their approach," he said. "I don't think here we have a political approach to things. I am not a politician and we do not fight our image in a political way. We do it in a sporting way.
"If you win, you win and if you lose, you lose. We do not protect ourselves. When we win, we win and when we don't we come in for criticism. "But I think that is down to club mentality. [We are] a club without a big history that has a new owner with ambitions, and who brings people in who are not afraid to fail, and assumes clear targets, desires and ambitions. If we reach them we are happy and if we don't reach [them] we have no excuses. We just accept it in a sporting way."
Mourinho continued his thinly veiled attack on the Frenchman when asked about the potential fixture congestion Chelsea face as they step up their pursuit of the three remaining domestic trophies as well as the Champions League.
"It is unbelievable but what can I do?" he asked. "I prefer to do that than to already be on holidays. I know both us and United have games postponed on Easter Monday and if one or both of us reaches the FA Cup semi-finals it's another league game postponed and that is a big problem. But I prefer that than being out of the competitions. At this moment if Chelsea were out of all four competitions I would imagine we would be in a difficult situation."
David Beckham's debut for LA Galaxy could come against Chelsea after the Premiership champions announced their participation in the World Series of Football. The four-team tournament will take place at Galaxy's Home Depot Center, with the hosts due to face Chelsea in the second round of matches on July 21.
