Mourinho and Costa in bust-up as Chelsea win again

But Dynamo Kiev’s shock victory in Porto means Chelsea have not yet qualified for the knockout stage of the competition, despite moving to the top of Group G. “We tried to protect ourselves by only training a little bit on it but to my surprise Maccabi trained on it after us, plus there was the warm-up before the game, so the pitch was really bad”.

A truer test of their resurgence will come at White Hart Lane, though, where Chelsea lost 5-3 on New Year’s Day.

“But it’s two wins, they have scored goals, everybody has chipped in”.

Chelsea ended the night top of their Champions League group but still endured the sort of bumpy night that summed up their season. Only that stopped us playing better and cost us more goals.

Nevertheless, Maccabi hit the ground running at the start of the second half and played Chelsea as equals despite having one man fewer.

If we were to be realistic, however, Chelsea will not go unbeaten until the end of the season. Eran Zahavi found himself free on the break and fired a shot to the far post, but Begovic just got his fingertips on the ball to hold the lead. Chelsea’s longest winning streak last season was five matches, but the average winning streak was somewhere between three to four matches with those runs often being followed by a draw.

There was another flashpoint on the stroke of half-time, as Mourinho was involved in an on-pitch bust-up with Costa.

Costa missed a couple of clear cut chances to score in the first half and his lack of awareness and movement caused Mourinho to lash out against him and the Spanish striker replied in kind. Mourinho turned to his bench for the final quarter, but the game against limited opponents was already won.

“The pitch didn’t help the team with more quality”, he told BT Sport.

John Terry was then forced off on a stretcher after suffering an -injury to his right leg, with Kurt Zouma taking over.

Asked if Terry was a doubt for the weekend’s trip to Tottenham, he added: “Of course he is”. I want to stay in the club, the club wants me to stay.

‘I was saying before, such a handsome stadium, such a fantastic public, ‘ said the Chelsea boss. John is a special guy, with a special desire to recover.

However, even with the likes of Mangala, Nasri, Zabaleta and Bony also out through injury, City will still be able to call upon the forward line of Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne and perhaps most importantly Sergio Aguero to fire them into the knock out phase. “We really needed to win this match, it was so important, two victories in a few days. To do that is great”.