No way, Jose

Most entertaining managerial spat of the season so far has to be the frank exchange of views between Jose Mourinho and Sam Allardyce after West Ham held Chelsea scoreless at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night.

In case you missed it – and Chelsea missed it all night – the bare stats tell the guts of the story: the home side had 39 efforts on goal to West Ham’s one but, through a combination of death-or-glory defending by the visitors, a superlative performance by Hammers keeper Adrian and a recurrence of Chelsea’s inability to find the clinical finish, the night ended with Mourinho fuming and Allardyce unable to keep the smile off his face.

Mourinho promptly grabbed the post-match headlines by accusing the opposition of playing “football from the 19th century”, characterised, in his view, by time-wasting, feigning injury and ten men not daring to put a foot outside their own penalty area. Sam Allardyce’s team, he went on, had come to the Bridge not wanting to play football, let alone with an ambition to win or even, as he put it, “feel part of the quality of the Premier League”.