EPL Day 3 (rescheduled game) Chelsea 2-1 Aston Villa
Mourinho in front of the press:
‘If we are here with a draw it would not be an unfair result,’ Mourinho conceded after the game.
‘Aston Villa fought a lot for a result, they don’t play a lot because every ball the goalkeeper has he kicks, but they created great difficulties and probably if Petr Cech did not save a shot at the far post from Weimann we don’t even get a point.
‘Villa have a special player with special qualities and they use him. The goalkeeper has a great kick and Benteke is fantastic in the first ball and they play from this. They have this and they have the counter-attack and we handled the counter-attack fantastically because we played with great balance. But the situation with Benteke it is difficult to control because you can’t press the goalkeeper – he kicks the ball and after that everything is born from Benteke.
‘The great thing today is Villa gave us a different match and we coped; defensively we were strong. We could do better with the ball and maybe my decision to change only two players for the start was not the best, maybe we should have had more fresh players, but we fought hard.’
‘The world loves English football rather than other leagues for reasons and one is duels that are handled in a certain way, and the ref did very well. For 90 minutes there was a real football fight between Benteke and Ivanovic.’
