Mourinho warns Chelsea to beware another Palace coup

Jose Mourinho has warned his Chelsea stars to beware
another significant setback at Crystal Palace on Saturday
as the Premier League leaders return to action after the
international break.
Mourinho’s side lead the table by five points after winning
six of their first seven matches and are widely expected to
cement that position when they travel to Selhurst Park this
weekend.
But Blues boss Mourinho remembers only too well that
Palace dealt a major blow to Chelsea’s title challenge with
a shock 1-0 victory in the corresponding fixture last season.
That loss in March prompted Mourinho to concede Chelsea
wouldn’t win the title and his team eventually finished in
third place.
“It was one of those games where I lost and I deserve to
lose,” Mourinho said.
“I know why I lost. I accept that. Last season we lost there
because they were better than us, in every aspect of the
game.”
Chelsea lacked “balls” on that occasion, Mourinho said at
the time, but he is confident they can exert their own
influence more decisively this time.
“We have more personality to impose our game,” Mourinho
said.
“In their style, Crystal Palace is better than us. I think we
have to try to play our game and not their game.”
Defending champions Manchester City, currently second,
are at home to Tottenham and on-loan midfielder Frank
Lampard has told his team-mates to be wary of a
revitalised Spurs.
“They may go through a slight transitional period but I was
very impressed with their manager (Mauricio Pochettino)
when he was at Southampton and if he can bring the same
imprint on Tottenham, who arguably have more quality
within their squad, they’ll do really well,” Lampard said.
Yet one of the success stories of the season so far has been
the way in which south coast side Southampton, despite
losing their manager and several key players to top-flight
rivals, have nevertheless flourished under new manager
Ronald Koeman to be third in the table ahead of their match
at home to Sunderland on Saturday.
Such has been the impact the former Dutch international
has made at St Mary’s there have been calls for him to take
charge of the Netherlands national side, who have lost two
of their opening three Euro 2016 qualifiers after finishing
third at this year’s World Cup in Brazil.