Jose Mourinho wants Chelsea to kill opponents

Jose Mourinho had demanded that his Chelsea team develop a ruthless streak in front of goal in order to avoid panicking late on in their matches.

The Blues edged past strugglers Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge on Saturday with a 2-1 win and are now just two points behind their next league opponents Arsenal in second ahead of their clash on Monday.

"The base of our game is to kill opponents by scoring goals, because we don't want to go in the direction of being a more defensive team," Mourinho told reporters. "This is the easy direction to go: to build a team, to close the team, to make it compact, to wait for a goal, waiting for a counter-attack.

"This is not what we want to do and because it's not what we want to do, the way to kill opponents is to score goals. When you don't kill opponents playing well, when in the game you have bad moments - because you always have bad moments in the game - you are in trouble.

"You put yourself into trouble and you panic a little bit. When you lose possession of the ball or when they get a free kick or when they get a corner or when they put a long ball in the box, you shake. And because you shake, you make mistakes."

Chelsea travel to the Emirates Stadium next week to face table-topping Arsenal.