• Premier League

Chelsea are still the best, boasts Mourinho

Jose Mourinho staunchly defended his Chelsea side following their Premier League defeat to Newcastle on Saturday, stating "we are better than anybody else."

Mourinho's Chelsea lost their unbeaten record this season as they slipped to a 2-1 defeat at St James' Park. Having dropped five points on successive weekends in the North East, the gap to defending champions Manchester City has been cut from eight points to three.

Walking the cow

What Jose Mourinho might look like with a cow © Photoshop image: PA/Getty

• People have become so used to Jose Mourinho's diversionary tactics that last weekend he cranked things up with a bout of the bizarre.
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The Portuguese initially pointed the finger at Newcastle's ball boys after Chelsea's "anomaly" result, but said he expected a positive response from his players.

"We are top of the league," Mourinho said. "Nobody has done better than us. Everyone would like to be in our position. So we are more than fine. We are better than anybody else."

"I will back them [the players] to bounce back. For people like me who have been in football for so long you have to accept this anomaly. To come here and be better than our opponents and lose, that is football.

"I don't say my team is the best, I say my team is top of the league and at this moment nobody has the same points we have. Because of that at the moment we're the best team in the Premier League.

"The players are not jumping with happiness but they are accepting the defeat as part of the game. They tried everything, were unlucky and are not happy with that, but that is football."

Mourinho remained calm over the condition of £32 million-summer signing Diego Costa, who has struggled to regain his early season goal-scoring form following a succession of hamstring issues.

"He has to improve his condition," Mourinho said. "He was injured, he had many doubts and he had a long time without training and that obviously must have an effect on a player - the way he runs, the way he moves, his coordination.

"He has to recover but I don't think there is any problem. For me, the problem is not the goals. The goals will come as a consequence of his condition."

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