Friday, 14th February, 2014
Tomorrow's "big and beautiful" FA Cup games are at boiling point already, with Jose Mourinho claiming Arsene Wenger was the real specialist on failure if the Frenchman had any reason to accuse him of being afraid.
The Premier League's unpredictable nature on the pitch has thrown up some near-predictable verbal jousting between Mourinho, Wenger and Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini.
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The latest round involves Wenger claiming it was Mourinho's "fear to fail" that forced the Portuguese to shy away from talking up Chelsea's title chances.
Whether or not it is Chelsea's title to lose, as Wenger also added, Mourinho hit back in typical fashion today, with a direct assault on Arsenal's long barren run.
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"[Wenger’s] a specialist in failure; I'm not," Mourinho, whose side take on Manchester City tomorrow, told a press conference today. "If supposedly he's right, and I am afraid of failing, it's because I don't fail many times.
"The reality is that eight years without a piece of silverware is a failure. If I do that at Chelsea, I won't come back."
While Pellegrini has already hinted he will not play the "mind games" anymore, Wenger is a veteran of that English edition – going back to the Sir Alex Ferguson era, no less.
He backed his experience to declare Chelsea were on shaky ground atop the table, but Mourinho added: "The champion is Man United. And until the moment where mathematically they lose it, it belongs to Man United.
"If Man United is not the champion this season, and we all agree it's almost impossible for them to be, Man United lose the title, nobody else."
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