Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho admitted that his side won ugly on Wednesday night against Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge, but he has also revealed that he has missed the competitiveness of the Premier League during his times in Italy and Spain with Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
An own goal and a Branislav Ivanovic header was enough for Chelsea to make it two wins out of two for the season, but Christian Benteke bagging his third goal in two games, put a bit of pressure on Mourinho’s men.
Despite the nervy game and the hard-fought victory, after the game the Chelsea boss admitted that this is the main reason to why he came back to the Premier League after revealing that Real Madrid wins at home were too easy.
He said: “In matches at the Bernebau, Real Madrid win every match and usually very comfortably.
“This is what I missed about the Premier League. This was hard.”
Mourinho knows that his side were lucky to pick up all three points and he also admitted that maybe Villa deserved at least a point from the game.
“Maybe they deserved a point in the end, it wouldn’t have been unfair,” he continued.
“They have their style which is not my style. They have a special player in Benteke and they put long balls into him – he makes a lot of fouls as do their defenders so it’s difficult to have a game of quality with them.
“But they are good on counter-attack. The moment they get the ball they are very dangerous and can score a lot of goals so we had a plan not to give them chance to counter.
“The long ball game, you can’t control. The game becomes ugly, but we fought a lot. The players tried to adapt and gave their life to get the three points.
“Sometimes you have to win on effort rather than quality.”
Written by Alex Batt – @AlexBatt
