Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho aimed a thinly-veiled dig at the club's Premier League rivals during their end-of-season awards dinner this evening.
Chelsea were accused in some quarters of being boring on their way to winning the Premier League title with three games to spare this season, but Mourinho was keen to stress the importance of success at both ends of the field.
Using graphics to help his story, the Portuguese manager drew parallels with teams wearing similar kits to those of Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United when making a speech at the ceremony.
"I don't think my players got the respect that they deserve after what they did from day one till the last day. And these are words that I really feel, serious words," he said.
"This is a football pitch with two goals, one ball, but there is one team [in a plain red shirt] that would like to play without goals. That team plays really well and the ball goes and goes and goes and the quality of the ball possession is really beautiful, but no goals. And they ask the international board of FIFA to play like this, but they were told that it was not possible, that the bigger percentage of ball possession doesn't win matches and they were not champions.
"After that there was another team [wearing sky blue shirts] that were less radical and they asked to play only with one goal. They were fantastic and they scored a lot of goals and the goals were coming from every position and they score and they score and they score, but they never conceded goals, because no goal. Again, the international board told them 'I'm sorry, you can't be champions because football is with two goals'.
"The third team [red shirts, white sleeves] was almost there, because they wanted to play with two goals. They were scoring some, they were also conceding some. They were fantastic. They scored really beautiful goals, they concede some goals too and they were almost there. But they asked the international board to play only between January and April. And they told 'no chance, no chance'. You have to play between August and May, so they couldn't be champions.
"Finally come another team [blue shirts]. They wanted to play with the normal rules and they know that to win matches they had to score one more goal than the opponent. How can you do this? By scoring a lot of goals or not conceding and scoring one. And they did it both ways. Scoring a lot, conceding some. Scoring one goal and conceding no goals. That was the option and lots of goals were conceding, they played from August till May and sometimes they brought the bus.
"The end of the story is just simple. We have to start believing that they learned the lesson and next season will be much, much more difficult for us. We have to be ready for that."
Chelsea led the Premier League table for a record 274 days on their way to the title, in addition to losing just four matches in all competitions this season - a record low in the Premier League era.
Barney Corkhill
