Jose Mourinho taunts Arsenal: 10 years without a title, now that is boring

The Blues can win the Premier League title next Sunday

John Terry (left) and Gary Cahill celebrate after the draw at Arsenal which put Chelsea one step closer to the Premier League title (GETTY IMAGES)

Jose Mourinho mocked Arsenal’s “very boring” 11-year Premier League title drought tonight, after moving within five points of becoming this year’s champions.

Chelsea drew 0-0 at Arsenal with a defensive performance scorned as “boring” by the home crowd at the Emirates. Mourinho responded by referring pointedly to Arsenal’s recent record in the competition.

“’Boring’ I think is 10 years without a title,” said Mourinho in his post-match press conference. “That's very boring. You support the club and you're waiting, waiting, waiting for so many years without a Premier League title, so that's very boring.”

Arsenal last won the Premier League in 2003-04. Mourinho is about to win his third Premier League title since then, while also winning two Serie A titles and one La Liga in the intervening years.

Mourinho then made clear why he believes his Chelsea team is less ‘boring’ than Arsenal, even if they do not share their reputation for expansive football.

“Maybe [the fans] are not singing to us,” Mourinho said. “Maybe, when you want to win a game and you're at home and you take [Olivier Giroud] off, maybe the home fans want to see [Danny] Welbeck and Giroud up front. We had a very good experience.”

“The boring team is the team with the second most goals in the Premier League, the best team with goal difference. Only City have scored more goals than us.” City have scored 70 goals so far, Chelsea 65 and Arsenal 63.

“We scored a lot of goals and, in a period where we don't have Diego Costa or Loic Remy and we have only one striker, we need to work in a way where he can help us with all the matches we are having,” Mourinho said. “We changed a bit our dynamic and we are not scoring so many goals as before. But, even so, we are the second team with more goals.”

While Mourinho risked re-igniting his feud with Arsene Wenger, he insisted that honesty was the path to popularity. “I have lots of love,” he said, responding to accusations of unpopularity. “If you tell the truth, people will fall in love with it. If you tell the truth, you will walk in the truth and people will blow kisses at you.”

Mourinho played Oscar as a striker in the first half, only for the Brazilian to be taken off at half-time with a head injury after a first-half collision with David Ospina. Oscar was taken to hospital for tests.

Chelsea restricted Arsenal to almost no clear-cut chances and Mourinho hailed John Terry’s performance as the best during their many years of working together.

David Ospina clashes with Oscar (Getty)

“I told John Terry in the dressing room that this was his best, the best JT has ever played,” Mourinho said afterwards.

“He had fantastic performances in the five or six years we worked together, and some of them with goals. There was one performance at Highbury in my first season [2004-05]. But I think today everything was clean: giving cover, the defensive line, interceptions, reading the game so well. The team was phenomenal, but John was one step ahead of every other player.”

Chelsea are now five points away from winning their first Premier League title since 2009-10. “It leaves five points,” Mourihno said, “if we had lost, eight points. So it is like three points. If we do that, we will be champions being top of the league since day one. Only top teams can do that.”

Arsene Wenger, who has seen any plausible hope of winning the title evaporate, insisted that his side had played well against a rigid opposition.

“We did enough to win the game today and Chelsea defended well,” Wenger said. “In the first half we had the right intensity. We dropped that in the second half and came back into the right level for the last 20 minutes. In fact, when we finished the game off, we did have a great chance in the final minute of the game.”

Wenger, though, admitted his team were not quite at their creative best. “We lacked a bit, maybe, freedom of mind today,” he said. “Maybe we were too conscious of their counter-attacking and didn't play enough freedom in the final third, and didn't make the right decisions. Today the decisions were not always right. The build-up was quick and sharp, but the final ball was not there.”