Tonight’s only certain winner

Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson: the two arch rivals go head to head at Highbury tonight, but is the league already over?

THERE are those who see Arsenal's Premiership clash with Manchester United tonight as the battle for second place, but not Jose Mourinho. The Chelsea coach is well aware that teams have led the Premiership by a distance before and failed to win it.

"If I could choose, I'd like them to draw," he said yesterday. "Since we established a five-point advantage, I have been repeating the same thing to the players: our object each weekend is to maintain the lead. Continue like that and bingo."

With double that five-point lead you would expect him to say the title is already won, but Mourinho is more circumspect. "Don't even think about it. We can lose a game at any time and in England, that's very easy to do. What I can say is that with a minimum five-point advantage we can slip up and still be in first place. But we still have many games to play and many of them will be tough.

The title race is completely different from Portugal, says Mourinho. "There, with a five-point lead, you could say you just have to win your home games to be champions. Not in England you can lose any game, at any time. If you are a big club in Portugal, you just need a good team with a solid base. In England it is very difficult: Chelsea last did it 50 years ago; most of the fans have never seen the club win the title," he said in an interview with A Bola newspaper in Portugal.

"Five or six years ago Newcastle had a 12-point lead and lost out to Manchester United. You can only be sure when it's mathematically certain. However, if we were to have a six or seven-point lead with a month to go, so we were in a position to lose two games, then yes it would be practically impossible for us to fail."

It is mainly the fixture build-up that makes Mourinho cautious.

"Don't forget we are in four competitions, which makes managing the team very hard, especially as fielding your second string in cup-ties is viewed badly in England, because of the traditional respect for those competitions. It's all right to lose and be knocked out, but you must not lose because of disrespect for the cup itself and what it represents."

Chelsea's defensive strength has been the most obvious reason for their rise to the top, with just eight league goals conceded so far, but Mourinho is quick to point out that Arsenal and Manchester United also have top-class defenders.

"Ashley Cole is the best in England for his position, Silvestre is one of the best in France, Sol Campbell and Rio Ferdinand are two of the best English central defenders, Heinze is the best Argentinian, Gary Neville is also very good. We are well organised defensively: we defend very well as a team. The attacking players know what they have to do when the team loses possession, the midfield as well, everyone knows how to respond depending on where their team mates are."

This readiness of the whole team to defend has led to Chelsea being described as 'boring' by some, and Mourinho admits he has sometimes had to rein in players such as Damien Duff.

"Against Portsmouth the other weekend I had to talk to the players at half-time. We were winning 3-0 and I could sense towards the end of the first half that the crowd was ecstatic about the quality of our football and were encouraging players to show off and take risks.

"So I told them that I didn't want to win 10-0, just to win. And I used Duff as the example because he runs most in every game, as if it were a challenge saying that I preferred to win 3-0 with him running six miles rather than his usual eight. I said I wanted to keep possession, not to run but rest with the ball, controlling the play and saving ourselves for the matches to come, playing with the head rather than the heart."

The words Mourinho repeatedly uses to describe how he wants his team to play are 'intelligent' and 'rational'. He is sensitive about some of the criticism early in the season which evidently put him under a bit of pressure. "I needed to start with defensive organisation as the first stage of building my team, and that's what led people to call us boring when we won games 1-0 or drew 0-0 early on."

But he insists that Chelsea are currently playing the most attractive football in the league, as well as the most effective.

"Anyone who says there is a more attractive side is lying. We have the best goal difference and we've scored three or four goals more times than any other side."

Mourinho is happy to recognise that he plays mind games and he regards psychology as an important part of his job.

"I like to be controversial sometimes and to keep quiet at others. I like to be provocative and I recognise that others will seek to provoke me on occasion. It's not agitation for the sake of agitation though. It is all to do with the job and my objectives."

An example of this deliberate approach was his arrogance when he arrived in England, pointing out that while England might have a great league, it only had two European champions: himself and Alex Ferguson.

"At the start of the season I felt I needed to be arrogant, to define my space, to send a message to my team. I felt I needed to draw a line in relation to my players, because although they are great players, they lived somewhat under the shadow of Man United and Arsenal. Now I'm behaving differently because the team is different.

"I can understand what my team needs and give it to them. And I can also understand what others want and not give it to them. There's a lot of exhaustive study involved, with the support of many people who work with me, and who provide me with all the information I need. Here's an example: I would only give this interview to an English paper and I know all my statements will be reproduced after a lot of preparation."

For all this, Mourinho appears more relaxed, and perhaps even happier, than he did in Portugal. One of his dreams is to lead the Portuguese to victory in the European Championship or the World Cup, but he says he loves it at Chelsea and in the Premiership.

"English football is the football for me, and Chelsea is the club for me. Nobody could provide a better championship, nobody could provide a better club, or a better squad, or better players. Nobody could offer me a better city, nobody could provide a country with more passion for football, with stadiums always packed like I have here.

But Mourinho does not intend to grow old in the saddle, unlike his mentor Bobby Robson, or the manager he most admires in British football, Alex Ferguson. "I'm 42 years old and if I can have a further contract here, let's do it. By my reckoning, I have another 13 to 15 years as a coach. I might continue until I'm 56 or 57, but you won't see me carrying on when I'm 70, like Bobby, or 65 like Ferguson."