José Mourinho finds history stacked against Chelsea

City manager Manuel Pellegrini said that a particularly sharp Aguero was unlucky not to have scored more in the first half.

Now the question is, can Mourinho, Costa and company take this painful lesson on board and come back with the right answers? It was the first time he had been substituted by Mourinho in 177 Premier League games.

The point was not to bring John out but to bring Zouma in. “You could see it – we were setting traps all over the pitch and it planned out perfectly for them“.

Convinced? It is a fair point.

Since returning to Chelsea for a second-spell in charge, Mourinho has resurrected Terry’s career when it seemed to be all but over during Rafael Benitez’s tenure at Stamford Bridge in 2013.

Terry certainly didn’t look pleased on the bench, but it will be mischievous to deduce that there is some sort of rift between the pair.

Playing intensely and believing in our game makes anything possible.

POPULAR: Chelsea FC Transfer Rumours: Alex Telles, Isco, More! It was in fact a tactical switch and it was also the first time in 176 games that Mourinho had subbed out Terry, who played every single second of last season’s title-winning season. I still l think there is a bit more to go, I’m still not fully convinced.

In the other game of the evening, Arsenal got off the mark for the season as Damien Delaney’s second-half own goal gave them a 2-1 win at Crystal Palace.

The pundit was speaking during Monday Night Football and was reflecting on the champions’ 3-0 defeat to City at the Etihad on Sunday. Had Aguero been sharper or Begovic been less in form, the match would have never been as close as 3-0.

Shinji Okazaki and Riyad Mahrez made it 2-0 before half-time which did the damage as West Ham only managed to pull 1 goal back through Payet. There is no dressing up this result and there is no way it can be successfully twisted. But it’s more positive for Manchester City, I can see the evolving team, the changing team happening, because they were stale for the last 12-18 months and that’s slight different. People will inevitably speculate because of the history of the club and the manager but at the moment that is just speculation. Maybe we draw against them last year and before we lost, but always we dominate Chelsea. He’ll be thinking long and hard tonight about what it means for him. A look at the best back pages… The England global has covered the full-back when a quick counter-attack has bypassed Kolarov, allowing him time to recover to his position.

Although Chelsea did not impress defensively, their new goalkeeper Asmir Begovic did well to stop some of the shots in the first half, but eventually, one of Aguero’s strikes saw the back of the net after taking a couple of touches to get around three defenders.