Jose Mourinho reacts to claim he threatened Arsene Wenger

Costa has proved a thorn in the side of Arsenal’s defence in recent times, including scoring the victor in the meeting between the two teams at the Emirates Stadium last season.

Despite marking the 20th anniversary of his arrival at Arsenal, the Gunners boss has found himself under increasingly heavy fire from fans unhappy with his failure to win the Premier League since 2004.

Arsenal have only beaten a Mourinho side once in 14 meetings under Wenger, a 1-0 victory in last season’s Community Shield.

Constantly niggling and riling his opponents as become part of Costa’s game, with the 27-year-old lucky to escape to red cards already this season. For this reason, I think Wenger is doing a good job with the young players. “I like the qualities of the player”. I’m sure they will fight until the end to win the title. The rest is down to the referees to get the game and the rules respected.

“[Antonio] Conte has very strong players in transition, like Hazard, like Willian, like Diego Costa”.

“This is a special game for Cesc, but the most important thing is that he’s Chelsea’s player and he’s playing very well”.

“There’s the possibility of him starting tomorrow but I have another day to make the decision”.

Speaking ahead of Arsenal’s game against Chelsea, Wenger refused to respond to the alleged comment.

‘I agree completely. I think we didn’t want to get rid of Gnabry, we wanted to keep Gnabry, but [he] was in his a year ago of contract.

At the Emirates in January, Per Mertesacker was red-carded in the 18th minute for hauling down Costa as he raced through on goal and five minutes later the fiery Spaniard grabbed the only goal of the game.

Olivier Giroud, however, could return against Chelsea on Saturday, when Wenger is expected to make 11 changes from the team that beat Nottingham Forest in the EFL Cup.

The London rivals head into the clash level on 10 points after five games, now battle it out for the Champions League places.

“What is wonderful is that has nothing to do with our game tomorrow”.

The Gunners will be without Aaron Ramsey for the game after Wenger confirmed the Wales midfielder is still missing with a hamstring problem which is likely to keep him out of the next round of global fixtures.