Mourinho: Squad Not Strong Enough

The Christmas period often acts as an indicator of the eventual destination of the Premiership title. And, with a stoppage-time victory for Chelsea keeping Manchester United's lead to just two points, the closest contest for years unexpectedly became even more entertaining.

Sir Alex Ferguson began gloating after his team's 3-0 win at Aston Villa, mocking Jose Mourinho for promising Chelsea would be on top of the table by Christmas, while the Chelsea manager used his post-match press conference to complain that his squad was not strong enough.

'Everyone thinks we have the perfect squad, but we don't,' Mourinho said after watching a side lacking John Terry and Petr Cech make hard work of winning at Wigan. 'We only have three central defenders and when John Terry is injured we only have two. We no longer have the best goalkeeper in the world, either. We have no Joe Cole, we have suspensions, red cards and bad decisions against us. If we get any more injuries we are in big trouble and we already have Khalid Boulahrouz suspended.

'Manchester United are top of the table with no injuries, no suspensions and no referees like the one we had at Tottenham. Everything is going fantastically for them. It is the opposite to last season, when everything was fantastic for us and they had all the problems - Paul Scholes' eye injury, Ryan Giggs being out for a while. This season we are having the problems.'

People might laugh at that, with Chelsea able to bring £30million Andriy Shevchenko on for the last 10 minutes at the JJB and the transfer window around the corner, though Roman Abramovich has just started to hint that the big spending days might be over. Chelsea's owner would like to see his investment in the club's academy pay off and, while that may be admirable, it will not be of much assistance to Mourinho this season.

Manchester United, with Scholes not only fully recovered but back to his sparkling best, are presently sitting pretty, with Wigan to come at home on Boxing Day. Paul Jewell will do well to raise his team's morale after a desperately cruel defeat, whereas United will be full of confidence after a handsome away win prevented Chelsea gaining any ground.

Ferguson was in combative mood as a result. 'It shows that we shouldn't believe Jose Mourinho. He said Chelsea would be top at Christmas and they are not. He had to apologise after lying about an Everton player this week. Perhaps he should be apologising again.'

Mourinho claimed he could not remember making any promises to the effect that Chelsea would be top by Christmas and is still insisting that, with only two points separating the teams, the title can be decided when United visit Stamford Bridge. That fixture is not until mid-April, the week after Easter, and if the two teams are still as close then it will be some match.