Chelsea may not have set the world alight this season with Barcelona-style football but one thing is undeniable: they are deserving Premier League champions.
Their fourth Premier League title puts them back on top after a gap of five years in which Manchester City and Manchester United took turns to win the title twice each.
“It’s the most difficult league to win in the world of football,” manager Jose Mourinho said.
Mourinho led Chelsea to the titles in 2005 and 2006 during his first term and returned for a second spell in 2013. He also has won the league with Porto, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
Having begun the season with a series of eye-catching performances, their displays since the turn of the year have been functional rather than spectacular, including five 1-0 wins.
But as he usually does, Mourinho made his side incredibly tough to beat and despite claims they were “boring”, they have dominated the league from start to finish and were 16 points clear at the top before Manchester City began their match at Tottenham on Sunday.
As Mourinho said: “Do you think in the Premier League there is one manager who will say that Chelsea don’t deserve to be champions?”
“Ask every manager just to know their simple opinion, and they will say yes or no. They’re free to say yes or no. It’s just an opinion. I think, out of 19 managers, a huge percentage will say Chelsea deserve to win the league.”
Boring or not, the statistics speak for themselves.
Chelsea had scored the second-most goals and conceded fewer than all of them.
It’s an unstoppable combination and their lead over the rest says everything for Mourinho’s investment in the summer and his ability, always, to get the best out of his group of players.
The addition of leading goalscorer Diego Costa and fellow Spaniard Cesc Fabregas added class - and crucially, goals - to an already efficient side and the results followed, with just two defeats.
Former Chelsea forward Gianfranco Zola said he thought it “was a strong Chelsea this season”.
“I thought at the beginning of the season they played some very good football, very exciting with a lot of goals.”
Fabregas, who joined from Barcelona, said he knew from day one that it was going to be a successful season.
“Once we all met at the beginning of the season and we started training with each other, we knew we had a great squad,” he said.
Fabregas said he believed the title was the start of great thing for Chelsea.
“We want to go one step forward next year and fight more the Champions League,” he said.
Mourinho had said earlier that he would celebrate only for five minutes when the title is won after which he would be chalking out a strategy for 2015-16.
It’s a testimony to the unquestionable devotion he has to the team’s cause. He once boasted he was the “special one.” Very few would disagree with that.
