• Premier League

Mourinho: Torres becoming whole, Chelsea have soul

Jose Mourinho says he is hugely happy with Fernando Torres' contribution and that the player embodies the "collective soul" his Chelsea side are showing at the moment.

Once again asked whether he felt Torres was "back to his best", the manager said he was not interested in such narratives, but pointed to the way that Torres - like so many of his players - have 'self-motivated'. Mourinho did imply, however, that has been helped by the squad being "open" to his approach.

"I feel he's just giving his best every game," Mourinho said. "When he's the man of the match against Manchester City or when he's not the man of the match, or when he's on the bench and he comes, I just feel he gives his best, always, and that's the most important thing.

"I do what I always do, trying to get the best out of my players but in a very normal way, the man responsible for his self-motivation, self-commitment, for the ways he's working every day.

"I don't like this history of one day the player is a disaster, the next day the player is phenomenal. I don't think Fernando is a kid to be influenced by these wins, so I want him to be stable, I want him not to be too much worried about proving himself, or not to prove, or scoring or not scoring.

"He's scoring against Newcastle again, just work for the team, work for the team. I think a big thing is, I don't know if it's the correct word in English, if I translate from my Portuguese, it's 'state of soul' and collective 'state of soul' and at the moment my players of them they have this "collective soul". Good squad, good people, and we try our best every match."

Mourinho feels that has been key to Chelsea's "magnificent" October, in which the team won every game in all competitions.

"It's important to go in the right direction, to play the way we were playing, we are improving, we feel we are improving, the quality of our game is good," Mourinho said.

"The results in this moment in the last month were fantastic because we won every match, every match in every competition in October and we had to play Schalke away, Man City at home, very difficult matches.

"We won every match in October, so October magnificent for us but to be top or not to be top is a question in this moment of one point, two points and that is not very important. Of course it's better to be first than be fifth, that's obvious but no problem for us.

"We go to Newcastle, we know we have one of the most difficult matches in the whole season. It's very, very difficult for us to play at St James' Park but that's it, I want to try."

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