Jose Mourinho has signalled the start of hostilities ahead of the new football season, with a brace of warning shots across the bows of two of his main rivals in this year's title race.
In an interview with several national newspapers in Montreal, Canada, where Chelsea are on tour, the Portuguese manager was back to his prickly best, taking issue with Arsene Wenger's complaints over transfer spending and responding to criticism from Man City boss Manuel Pellegrini.
"Jose Mourinho has not changed," writes Matt Hughes of The Times. "What you see on the television and the touchline is what you get in the flesh... Mourinho is amusing, scathing, driven and intense, but never mellow."
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The theme of the interview is the manager's "soaring expectations and intolerance of those who fall short", but his most eye-catching comments relate to his old adversary Wenger, who is poised to mount Arsenal's biggest title push for a decade.
"Mourinho has shown little respect for Wenger over the years, and... it is clear that he regards the Arsenal manager as a hypocrite," says Hughes.
Days after Wenger claimed that Manchester United had abandoned their policy of developing home-grown talents and were chasing short-term success with a series of expensive signings, Mourinho was at pains to point out that the Gunners have forked out almost £150m in two years.
"If you add up the amounts clubs have spent in the last three or four years I think maybe you will find a surprise," said the Chelsea boss. "If you put [Mesut] Ozil plus Alexis Sanchez, plus [Calum] Chambers, plus [Mathieu] Debuchy, you will find a surprise. It's a fantastic squad with good players, fantastic goalkeeper, they are more than ready to be a title contenders. Get a calculator. That is the easiest thing, it leaves no space for speculation."
The "calculator" jibe may not be as barbed as Mourinho's previous "voyeur" and "specialist in failure" insults, but it means that the Chelsea boss has "reopened his feud" with Wenger, says John Percy of the Daily Telegraph. "Mourinho will face the Arsenal manager in this Sunday's Community Shield and has wasted no time in resuming the mind games," he notes.
The Chelsea boss has "begun the mind games before the Premier League season", agrees Steve Brenner of The Guardian.
Mourinho was in typically scathing form when talking about another rival Manuel Pellegrini, the Manchester City boss.
On the one hand Mourinho appeared to issue an apology of sorts to the Chilean for getting his name wrong and calling him 'Pellegrino' last season. The reason, explained the Chelsea boss, was that he once worked with a player called Mauricio Pellegrino. "I always made a mistake by calling one the other. The last thing I’d do is show a lack of respect," he said.
Having presented the olive branch he then withdrew it and accused Pellegrini of being "obsessed" with him.
The City boss aimed several digs at Chelsea over the summer, and Mourinho's response was typically haughty. "I am always thinking about football but in my holidays I did zero interviews," he said. "You are free of everything, questions, answers, controversy, interpretation, overreaction.
"Is he obsessed with me? I don’t know. When a manager is on holidays and still thinks about me, I have nothing to say."
