Mourinho: obsession with possession is 'moon football'

Chelsea have dominated the Premier League from start to finish this season but it has been a relatively quiet campaign for manager Jose Mourinho, who has failed to provide the quality of soundbites and headlines the English footballing public has come to expect.

The usually charismatic Portuguese has cut a grumpy and at times monosyllabic figure this season, complaining of a "conspiracy" against his side earlier in the campaign and accusing opponents, such as West Ham and Spurs, of setting out to thwart him.

However, he appears to have rediscovered his touch as the season approaches it climax and in the wake of a goalless draw against his old adversary Arsene Wenger. Responding to complaints that his side were "boring" during the clash at the Emirates on Sunday, he turned the allegation on its head, suggesting it was the Gunners who were the boring team having failed to win the league for a decade.

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He followed that up by coining a new expression for the modern football lexicon - "moon football", used describe the play of teams hell bent on possession, but without the cutting edge to win a game.

Talking ahead of Chelsea's game against Leicester, in which a win would move the Blues to within two points of the title, he lamented the current obsession with "ball possession", reports The Independent.

"People talk about style and flair but what is that? " he said. "Sometimes I ask myself about the future, and maybe the future of football is a beautiful, green grass carpet without goals, where the team with more ball possession wins the game.

"The way people analyse style and flair is to take the goals off the pitch. It's the football they play on the moon – where the surface is not good, with some holes but no goals."

He pointed out that his side had scored more goals than anyone apart from Manchester City and also had the best defence in the league, level with Southampton.

"If a good team is the team with most victories, we are the best team. If the best team are the side with fewest defeats, we are the best team. In any point of analysis, in any criteria you can find, we are the best team or the second best team. So it's as simple as that."