Mourinho savages obsessive ‘voyeur’ Wenger
Mourinho was visibly irritated by Wenger's suggestion his team may be losing belief after two games without a win. But his response, even by his standards, has been remarkably brutal and may be regarded as a step too far.
His players responded to Wenger's criticism with a 4-2 victory over Blackburn on Saturday but Mourinho still felt it necessary to answer his Arsenal counterpart more directly.
"I think he is one of these how do you call it in English? voyeurs. He is someone who likes to watch other people.
"There are some guys who when they are at home they have this big telescope to see what happens in other families. He must be one of them. He speaks and he speaks and he speaks about Chelsea. It does bother me because he is speaking all the time, but he never speaks about Arsenal.
"He should keep his own house in order, but he is always speaking about other families. It is a sickness. Being a voyeur is a sickness.
"Now and again you have to speak about your opponents, you have to answer a few things it is part of the game to try and put pressure on them and send a message. But when you do it all the time in the same direction it looks like a sickness."
Mourinho's volley of abuse is certain to upset Arsenal and does his own reputation no favours.
Arsenal could only draw with Tottenham at the weekend and are now 14 points behind the champions, and Mourinho was clearly keen to finish Wenger off.
"When you are on game number 11 and you still can't win away from home, and when without Thierry Henry you can't win a game, he should be worried about his own team.
"But he is worried about us because he is always speaking about us Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea!
"I have spoken to him when I've met him and he's always correct, no problems. But I think he must have a problem. I don't know if he wants my job but he loves Chelsea."
Not many people are going to continue loving Chelsea, however, if Mourinho doesn't find some grace and humility from somewhere in the coming weeks.
Mind games are part of the game but neutral fans are becoming weary of the constant aggressive boasts emanating from the Chelsea camp.
There is little doubt that Mourinho's side are the best in the Premiership, little doubt they will win the title and little doubt their manager is one of the best in the world. But does he really need to stoop to personal attacks on fellow managers?
Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard found a more measured way of answering Wenger's meddling, by scoring twice against Blackburn and thinking more carefully about his post-match comments.
The England midfielder has now scored 11 times this season and completed a century of league goals in his career, so he is in no mood to be upset by Arsenal's mind games.
"It's nice that people call one draw out of 10 or 11 games a stutter. That shows how far we've come at this club. We expect to win and we put pressure on ourselves to win week in, week out.
"When we don't and we draw people try and call it a stutter and catch us off guard. But fortunately the other teams that are saying this about us and drawing and losing games themselves."
Saturday's result for Chelsea leaves them 14 points ahead of Arsenal and 13 in front of Manchester United and only 10 games away from equalling Arsenal's record of 49 matches unbeaten in the Premiership.
It would be astonishing if the west London club could add that landmark to their list of achievements, but Lampard says it isn't the priority.
"We're not talking about it at all, it's more in the press than in the dressing room," he said.
"All we talk about is 'now' and the moment. We talked about winning this game and now we'll talk about beating Real Betis and that's the way we do things here."
Perhaps it is time Jose Mourinho stuck to his own rules, too.
Opta Fact: Frank Lampard scored the 100th goal of his career. Lampard is the first Premiership player to reach double figures this season.
Opta Fact: All six of the goals Chelsea have conceded have been netted in the first half.
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