Football
Kevin Palmer 10y

Mourinho: Chelsea win or 'go home'

Jose Mourinho says he would have walked away from his job at Chelsea if he did not believe he had a team equipped to win the Premier League title this season.

Mourinho said time and again through the 2013-14 campaign that he was building towards this season to mount a challenge for major honours, as he claimed he needed a year to reshape the squad he inherited from Rafael Benitez last summer.

The additions of Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Filipe Luis this summer have bolstered a squad that Mourinho added to in last January's transfer window, and when asked whether he gave a bullish response when he was asked whether he now had a team equipped to wrestle the Premier League title away from Manchester City.

"If I didn't think that way I would go home and let somebody else take charge of the team," he told the Chelsea website. "People can speak about other leagues, but England is the only country where five or six teams can win the title. Football is about competitiveness every weekend and that only happens in the Premier League.

"When you have the two Manchester clubs, the three clubs from London -- Tottenham, Arsenal and ourselves -- plus Liverpool, that's six top teams, where all of them can win the title. That's why everybody loves the Premier League.

"At Chelsea, if we didn't think we could win the league, or didn't think we had the quality to do it, we wouldn't be here working so hard. We respect our opponents and their ambitions, because they have the same ambitions as us, but we want to win the Premier League and we are ready for that."

Speaking in a conference room at the Chelsea's pre-season training base in Velden, Austria, Mourinho went on to reflect on the rebuilding process he has undertaken ahead of what he hopes will be a sustained push for domestic and Champions League success.

"Last year we reached the [Champions League] semifinals and it was a transitional season," he added.

"A team which has been a winning team for ten seasons is changing step by step, we've bought new players and we are trying to build for the next decade. We had a very young team at the time but, even so, we reached the semifinals and were playing to win the competition.

"This season we think we are going to be stronger, the younger players are more experienced, they are stable and better adapted to fighting for titles. You look around, to Spain, Germany and elsewhere in England, teams are getting stronger, spending big amounts of money and trying to sign the best possible players.

"We will go to the Champions League group stage with one objective: to qualify. When you reach the last 16, let's see what happens."

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