First negative signs coming out of Manchester City in the title race!

As a Chelsea fan sitting top of the league with points in the bag, on a run of fourteen games unbeaten, life is good at the moment.

In recent months we have sat and watched Jose Mourinho demonstrate once again why he IS the best in the business whether it's on the sidelines, with his tactics or his comments made in press conferences.

In space of a few weeks, Mourinho had wound up Arsene Wenger, wound up Manuel Pellegrini as he completed a league double over City inflicting a rare home defeat at Eastlands and had obviously wound up Cesc Fabregas and the Barcelona squad with comments about their current team compared to previous years.

Not only that, Mourinho turned on his own team, taking them all by surprise by fuming in the dressing room for 10 seconds to then walk off at half time at Fulham. Jose teared down team tactics off the wall and told the players to "sort their shit out!" to get some form of a response. Chelsea won 3-1.

Last weekend at half time, Mourinho made a tactical switch that turned the game against Tottenham and won us another all important three points to take us NINE points clear of City as it stands at the moment.

Jose Mourinho comes into his own at this stage of the season and it's up to the other managers to do the same!

Without question, City's reward for being successful in the various competitions has been a congested fixture list. They have three games in hand (with two of those to be confirmed) to play to catch up with Chelsea and if they win those games they go top of the league.

There has been plenty of comment on the title race as it is right now but Yaya Toure has given the first indication from the blue half of Manchester that Chelsea have the advantage.

When asked if the League Cup was the only trophy they win this season, would he class the season as a failure Toure said:

“A failure? Why? Why would it be a failure? We have already won a cup, so you can’t say that. Football is a competition and only one team can win each of them. So don’t say we would be failures because we have won something already, but now we want to win more. 

Teams come and they are desperate to beat us, though, so it is always tough. Teams are very motivated against us and you have to understand we are not a machine.

Chelsea are nine points ahead. Yes, we have three games in hand, but we could lose all three of them, so Chelsea, for me, is the favourite. But it is good that we can now focus on the Premier League and the most important thing is that we will get more rest.

We’ve been involved in so many competitions and it’s so hard, playing for national teams as well. It’s always so difficult.

And against Barcelona, we lost Agüero again who is always an important player for us, but we cannot think about this defeat because Saturday is going to be difficult. Hull is a serious team, but everything is going to be easier for us now with only the Premier League so I hope we can finish well.

We just need to work, keeping working and try to win all of the games. We know it’s going to be difficult, but when you lose games, you learn more about yourselves. Sometimes when you lose it’s not bad and we learnt by playing against a big team like Barcelona.

They deserve to go through. Over the two games that they were better, but they have more experience at this level than us. We are out but we have to focus on the Premier League and then see what we can do in this again next time.

We’ve shown that we have improved. We have to move on and think about the Premier League. With the players we have I still think we can do it.” 

There are key parts of that interview that are music to my ears purely as a Chelsea fan.

He talks of City not being a machine, talks of the fact that they are tired and need rest, that they could lose their games in hand and that this weekend against Hull (having only been back for 48 hours) is going to be difficult.

I have said it before and I will say it again, I disagree with Jose Mourinho, I would take the points in the bag over games in hand every single time!

As Petr Cech said in my last post, all Chelsea will continue to do is to take each game as it comes and one game at a time to see where it takes us.

It's the fact that someone as mighty for City as Yaya Toure has stated that he personally sees Chelsea as favourites in the title race could be huge as we see the first sign of doubt in Manchester!