Mourinho set to land new Chelsea deal

Jose Mourinho is to be rewarded for guiding Chelsea to a first Premier League title in five years with a new contract.

The 52-year-old Portuguese manager is halfway through a four-year contract signed on his return to Stamford Bridge in June 2013 and has verbally agreed a two-year extension, according to reports.

Mourinho won two Premier League titles in his first spell — including in 2005 Chelsea’s first championship in 50 years — before departing after little more than three years as manager.

Since his return after a six-and-a-half-year absence, Mourinho has often spoken of his desire to stay as long as owner Roman Abramovich wishes to keep him.

The Blues boss repeated that after Sunday’s 1-0 defeat of Crystal Palace, which secured Chelsea’s first title since 2009-10 and the eighth of his prolific career.

“As I was saying since the beginning of the season, I stay here until Mr Abramovich wants me to stay. The day he tells me to go, I go,” said Mourinho, who has led something of a nomadic existence since leaving Porto for London in June 2004.

Mourinho left Chelsea in September 2007 and spent two seasons as Inter Milan boss, before in 2010 moving to Real Madrid for three seasons and then rejoining the Blues.

Prior to the Capital One Cup final victory over Tottenham on March 1, Mourinho revealed he would consider moving to another English club if he left Chelsea, where he wishes to stay for the remainder of his career.

“I don’t want to go away. I will stay here in this chair until Mr Abramovich tells me ’Jose, it’s enough’,” Mourinho said on February 27.

“I am in Mr Abramovich’s hands. Until he wants me to stay, I will stay—– and that is what I want.”

Mourinho has spoken of strengthening his squad for next season and there could be some departures, including long-serving goakeeper Petr Cech and veteran striker Didier Drogba.

One player who is keen to stay despite reported interest from Real Madrid and Barcelona is Cesar Azpilicueta, the right-footed Spain international who has impressed at left-back.

Azpilicueta told RMC Radio: “I’m currently playing in the best team in England, I’m not thinking about another team.”

Meanwhile Chelsea defender Gary Cahill wants to win the Champions League for a second time after landing his first Premier League title.

“We want to make winning the Champions League more of a goal next season. We’d love to win it,” Cahill told the Evening Standard.

“We were disappointed to go out of the Champions League the way we did, even though we were unbeaten in the competition.

“It was a mad twist and that’s what can happen at that level. But the aim is to do better in the competition next season and of course the squad is capable of doing that.”

Cahill’s defensive colleague Branislav Ivanovic hailed the “balance” the Blues found which sent them on the way to the title this season.

“We’ve had a lot of great performances and this is just the beginning of what we can do for this club,” said the Serbian.

“This season we’ve had balance in the team. Defensively and offensively we played very well as a team. We didn’t concede a lot of goals and we also played attractive football and we dominated all the year. Maybe we didn’t expect to win it so soon but definitely we deserve it.”