Statement of intent from Mourinho and Torres

As I walked to the ground yesterday, I just couldn’t call it.

City have an awesome side, with some world-class players, but I really felt in the last few weeks that we were getting into the Mourinho groove. This team initially had the potential to be a bit lightweight — but instead, Jose is ensuring that it has a core of steel and as the game progressed yesterday you could see that in almost every player they were going to win that game or die trying.

Jose seemed to get everything right too. Substitutions were not only perfect but gave a very clear signal what he wanted and when — first stability (Mikel) but with a fresh set of legs to continue to probe (Willian) and then when he bought on Eto’o — everyone in the stadium was under no illusion that we were going for the win.