Arsenal vs Chelsea: Mutual contempt burns as rivals Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho face off again

The title race is almost over but it is just getting warm between managers

Sam Wallace
Saturday 25 April 2015 21:30 BST
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Arsène Wenger (left) and Jose Mourinho have to be separated by the fourth official, Jon Moss, during last October’s Premier League match at Stamford Bridge
Arsène Wenger (left) and Jose Mourinho have to be separated by the fourth official, Jon Moss, during last October’s Premier League match at Stamford Bridge

After one last skirmish on Sunday, the battle between Jose Mourinho and Arsène Wenger will be decided for another year, a preface, no doubt, to one last argument over their competing ideologies until the bell rings on the season for the final time on 24 May.

The Premier League title race is almost over but it is just getting warm between Mourinho and Wenger. Shots have been fired, although they will be nothing to the righteous indignation that could consume Mourinho if his club are crowned champions in the next five days. Equally, if Wenger scores his first win on Sunday over his counterpart in 13 games, then he knows that even the gentlest prod could start the proverbial riot.

The mutual contempt is as strong as it has ever been in these last few weeks of the season, when Arsenal, with 24 wins from their last 29 games, have left their run too late once again. It is just that so far it has not manifested itself in one of those colossal attacks from Mourinho, one of those “voyeur” or “specialist in failure” moments that end up printed on a new line of merchandise by the unofficial T-shirt vendors on Fulham Broadway.

But it looms, nevertheless. In his defence of Manuel Pellegrini last week, Mourinho mentioned how, in contrast to the Manchester City manager’s struggles, “some managers cannot win and life goes on”. Wenger inquired after Chelsea’s result at his post-match press conference last weekend and, on being told the news, replied “1-0? The usual!”. On Thursday he was back on the subject of Mourinho’s Chelsea and trying his hardest to sound like he was being polite.

Cesc Fabregas returns in Chelsea blue today

Asked whether he felt that Mourinho was the great pragmatist, Wenger replied: “Our job is to win football games and that’s what they’ve done in recent games. Is there anything to see in that? I leave you to assess that. But what’s important for me is to do what it takes to win the game [against Chelsea]. It’s easy to defend, if we have to defend then we will defend.”

When that line about it being “easy to defend” was put to Mourinho yesterday, he finally cracked. He had tried his best – laughed his way through a question about being pushed by the Arsenal manager, in the literal sense – but his threshold tolerance for Wengerisms is low.

“It [defending] is not easy,” Mourinho said, “not easy. If it was easy, he wouldn’t lose 3-1 at home to Monaco. If he defends well he draws 0-0 against Monaco and wins in Monte Carlo. It’s not easy to defend.”

It is along these fault-lines that one might expect the argument to open over the next few weeks, especially if Wenger’s side delay the eighth league title of Mourinho’s career with a victory at the Emirates tomorrow. On one side, Mourinho’s shock troops whom even he had to concede had adopted the “strategic” approach over the “artistic” in recent weeks; on the other Wenger, with an FA Cup final to play for, and the potential to pick holes in Chelsea’s impending triumph in the league.

Mourinho was at pains to explain what had caused him to scale down the ambitions of his team after the turn of the year, as if readying himself for the debate over the quality of the league season which has grown as the title race has wound down. In Mourinho’s case, he does not regard this as a spin of events or the necessary revisionism of a drab run-in. He really believes that he had no option other that to take what he euphemistically calls his “strategic” approach.

“Injuries and suspensions,” he said by way of explanation. “We lost progressively the balance of our team. In the first part of the season... everyone knew the Chelsea team. From a certain moment: Diego Costa injured, [then] suspended; [Nemanja] Matic suspended, [then] injured; [Cesc] Fabregas injured, suspended; Diego injured again. When you lose crucial pieces, the team loses certain qualities. I didn’t ‘think’. It was just a consequence of things. When I go to the [League] Cup final with [Kurt] Zouma in that [midfield] position and the [midfield] triangle built the other way, it was a consequence of Matic’s suspension. We were dealing with everything.

The survival raft, however, is needed elsewhere, most notably at Manchester City and Liverpool. Chelsea might more accurately be described as the battleship powering on towards their goal. Asked whether there would be a clash of styles between the two teams, Wenger replied that, “Maybe you will discover the Chelsea team are completely offensive and we are defensive for 90 minutes.” It was meant as a joke, except that Mourinho finds it very hard to laugh along when it comes to the Arsenal manager, unless it is one of those mirthless snorts of disbelief.

“He’s not my rival. I don’t feel that. He’s a manager of a big club in the same city where I work and live,” Mourinho said of Wenger. And for the first and only time that afternoon you knew that not even he believed what he was saying.

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