Jose Mourinho was left in no doubt the best team won today…
Our manager failed to blame his players for a performance that was well below the one we produced on this ground 12 days ago, with the manager citing City’s freshness – they didn’t have a midweek game, unlike us – as one reason for the home side’s dominance.
City took the lead through Stevan Jovetic, his calm finish beyond Cech coming just a minute after he had clipped the bar after our keeper had spilled a shot from Yaya Toure. We improved towards the end of the half but were unable to threaten Costel Pantilimon in the home goal despite some decent approach play.
Mourinho threw on Mohamed Salah in place of Samuel Eto’o at half-time but the change did not improve our collective attacking performance and it was City who deservedly doubled their advantage through the substitute Samir Nasri. The Frenchman released David Silva, possibly offside, before running on to the return ball and finishing into an empty net.
We exit the FA Cup at the fifth round stage so the focus turns to the Premier League and the Champions League, which begins again in ten days’ time. Mourinho is looking ahead after a result he believes reflected the pattern of the game…
‘City played much better than us and deserved to win,’ said Mourinho. ‘Football is in peace when the best team wins. Two weeks ago the best team won and today the best team won.
‘Give credit to my players because today proved that to win twice against City and to win here is very difficult to do. Credit for what my team did two weeks ago. Today the situation was simple. It’s simple to analyse. They were the best team and they won.’
City’s second goal was debatably offside but wouldn’t have changed the result
‘Was the referee team very poor in the second half? Yes. But even with a perfect referee team would Chelsea win the game? No. The second goal was offside, but they would have won 1-0 because we were never close to scoring, or being dominant, or scaring City in the game.
We will have no more FA Cup games this season
‘We go game by game and we are what we are. We always try to win the next game, it doesn’t matter the competition, so I don’t think one or two more games in the FA Cup would change anything for us or anything for them with the powerful squad they have.
‘Today was also clear there was a different freshness between the teams, one team played a few days ago and another team played last week and had one week without competitive football. It was easy to see the difference.’
We failed to offer much of a threat in the attacking third of the pitch
‘There are things I cannot say, and I want to keep to myself. I don’t want to individualise my striker or my keeper or my left-back. We are a team, we win and we lose together.’
City boss Manuel Pellegrini was naturally delighted with his team’s showing, two weeks after his side were at times outclassed by the same opposition, and also noted the difference between the two team’s level of freshness…
‘Today the team played very well in all senses. It was very important that we didn’t play against Sunderland because we were not tired.
‘Chelsea didn’t have any chances to shoot at our goal and we played well defensively and in attack against, and I repeat, a very good team.’