"I would not endure winless run against me like Wenger'' - José Mourinho

José Mourinho has suggested he would drive himself to distraction in the search for a solution if he experienced a winless run such as that which Arsène Wenger has endured against him. The Chelsea manager had another, related suggestion: it would never happen to him.
Sunday’s Community Shield pits Mourinho against Wenger for the 14th time and it is a remarkable statistic that Wenger continues to seek a victory over the man with whom he has such a difficult relationship. Mourinho’s hold over the Frenchman and Arsenal has sometimes seemed total.

“I think I would ask myself: Why?” Mourinho said when asked how he would react if the boot were on the other foot. “I would try to answer, not because of a mental block but because I would want to try to find solutions to help my team to do it – try to find a different way, try to find the reasons why it goes all the time against my team.”
Mourinho’s intolerance of defeat is a well-known part of his makeup and there were two moments during his pre-match press briefing on Friday that stood out – one humorous; the other accompanied by one of the Portuguese’s trademark icy stares.
It was put to Mourinho that he had, presumably, never been on the wrong end of a prolonged winless sequence against a rival. “No,” he replied. “I think I lost twice against Toni.” His audience began to rack their brains for the Latin maestro who had got the better of him. “I lost against Crystal Palace and against West Brom,” he continued. Ah, Tony Pulis.
Mourinho has fallen to Pulis teams at his previous two attempts – Chelsea lost 1-0 at Palace in March 2014 and 3-0 at West Bromwich Albion at the end of last season. That hardly constitutes a sequence, however, and the obvious suspicion is that this was Mourinho’s point.
The Chelsea manager went on to discuss how he sought to instil the winning mentality in his players and he gave an example. “In competitive situations in training, if one team is winning by three goals, finish,” he said.
“It means that the ones that are losing are not training well, so if you don’t train well, you don’t train. I did that once in Canada [during the pre-season tour]. I ended the training.”
Mourinho sounded keen not to attach too much importance to the result against Arsenal this weekend. He described the Community Shield as being somewhere between a pre-season friendly and a Premier League fixture and he cautioned against it being treated as a portent for the season.
“Arsenal won the Community Shield last season against the champions Manchester City and they finished third,” he said. “I don’t think it has a relation to the rest of the season.”
Mourinho’s principal selection decision involves Diego Costa. The striker felt a pain in a hamstring during the midweek friendly against Barcelona in Washington and the Spain international was taken off immediately. The squad flew back to London on Wednesday and transatlantic flights are rarely synonymous with optimising recovery from injury. Costa, however, knows his body and the 26-year-old has said it was nothing serious while Mourinho insisted that last season’s top scorer was fit and available.
Chelsea have been relatively quiet in the summer transfer market, certainly compared with their rivals, but Mourinho said the club were trying to sign a left-back following the sale of Filipe Luís back to Atlético Madrid. Baba Rahman, the 21-year-old from Augsburg in Germany, is the prime target, with his agent confirming that the Premier League champions have submitted a bid of €25m (£17.5m).
“We are trying to sign a left-back,” confirmed Mourinho. “We have only one [César Azpilicueta]. We are trying.”
(The Guardian)