Mou ready for teams 'parking the bus'

Posted Monday, August 18, 2014 by ESPN

Mou ready for teams 'parking the bus'
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has labeled his side title contenders for the forthcoming Premier League season.

"My squad is very good, not perfect, but it's very good," he added. "It has characters and personalities, it has people with ambition. We covered many positions. I'm very happy with the squad.

"We have an improvement in the goalkeeper group [with Thibaut Courtois' return from his loan spell]. We have improved in defence also because we got Kurt Zouma and Filipe Luis and that gives us more balance.

"Filipe is a pure left-back which allows Cesar Azpilicueta to play on the right and Branislav Ivanovic can play in the centre, so that gives us more options.

"Cesc is the kind of player that we didn't have. We had a box-to-box, a runner, a stable player. We never had this kind of football brain so that has improved.

"Costa has the power, mobility and technical quality that improves the team. Didier is still a player with important qualities and he has a special feeling in the group to persuade people to work hard.

"It's a squad in development, obviously, but it's a squad with more experience, more balance, a second year of work. It's a squad and team with conditions to be better."