Jose Moanihno

From Football365.com:

Says the ever-more-appropriately-nicknamed Jose Moaninho, at pains to make excuses for his side's defeat in their pre-season tour of America:

"After our first friendly match you can see we're still far behind and not ready for the new season.

"It's disturbing but that is the truth. We are paying for contributing more players to the World Cup.

"My players were heavy, slow and not sharp. I am disturbed but we have to work hard and play more friendlies. We will need up to seven more games to begin to find our range - it's that bad."

"Because we had so many players at the World Cup, we start at a disadvantage to every other club. Other people have had matches, but I have had just 12 days to prepare my players to compete against a team such as Arsenal, who have had many weeks."

F365's writers have already pointed out Mourinho's rather odd time-keeping. Chelski's marketing drive - sorry, pre-season tour - in America began a full 24 days before the start of the Premiership season.

They've also pointed out that Arsenal 'arrive in Zagreb for a critical Champions League qualifier minus nine first-teamers, including World Cup finalist Thierry Henry who has still yet to return to full training.'

They didn't bother to point out the rather dull fact that Arsenal and Chelski had the same number of players at the World Cup.

But there are two things about the whole affair that catch Mediawatch's attention.

The first is the memory of Mourinho's infamous claim to have a hundred-page dossier of Arsene Wenger's comments about Chelski - a claim which he compounded by labelling Arsene Wenger a "voyeur" and almost landing himself in court.

The second was his insistence in the summer of 2004 that ManYoo's problems could in no way be attributed to their players' exertions during the European Championships that year, and that any claims to the contrary were merely poor excuses.