Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has insisted it is too early to compare his class of 2014 with the team of serial trophy winners he assembled in his first spell as Stamford Bridge boss.
Mourinho will take on his one-time mentor Louis van Gaal when he takes his table topping side to face Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday and while Mourinho is confident he has another team that is ready to start winning major honours, he has brushed off suggestions that he revamped team can already be hailed as a match for the first team of champions he built at Chelsea a decade ago.
"Last time we won a lot, so I don't like to compare this team yet," he told reporters, reflecting on a Chelsea side that won the Premier League title in 2005 and 2006, as well as a host of domestic cup competitions.
"This team is showing great quality in its football and if we manage to win also titles, it can be better, but this is not the moment to start talking about that. We are a good team, we know that, but we are not as good a team as the Chelsea team that won so many titles. We are in October. It's too early for comparisons."
The attractive style Mourinho is promoting this season has taken some of his critics by surprise, with his philosophy of producing teams that win at all costs, even if it comes at the expense of entertaining football, banished at the start of this season.
"I think top managers they don't have a style that is just for them," argues Mourinho. "Top managers they use the players they have in the best possible way.
"To speak about Louis van Gaal's style when he was at Ajax, or Bayern Munich, or AZ, or the national team with Netherlands at the World Cup, you see there are differences. These teams did not all play the same way and it is the same for me and this Chelsea squad.
"We are trying to play a football adapted to the qualities of our players in this squad. This is something people sometimes don't understand. If you are a team that has players that are killers on the counter-attack, you have to play that style.
"If you have people like Eden [Hazard], Oscar, [Cesc] Fabregas, you need the ball. You need to control the game by having the ball, using their intelligence and creativity. The secret is when people don't understand that the style goes a lot with the qualities of the players."
When asked what is his idea of perfection, Mourinho insists his reputation for being a destroyer rather than a promoter of fantasy football is misplaced and he aims to highlight his team's best attacking qualities against a less than secure United defence.
"If you get results and you are not happy with the quality of the game it's not perfect," he added. "At the moment, we are playing well, we are not losing, we are playing good football. Everybody talks about Chelsea.
"People have taste and they prefer one style, they don't like so much another one. It's difficult to say that Chelsea is not playing good football at this moment. It's important for us as a group to have that feeling that we are getting results and we are playing well. This is perfect."
