With the Blues trailing 1-0 at the Etihad, Ramires looked to have equalised early in the second half, only to see his goal incorrectly ruled out for offside.

Eden Hazard then went close to scoring what would have been a deserved equaliser, before the home side netted twice in quick succession to secure the points.

‘In the first half the best team was winning, in the second the best team was Chelsea,’ said Mourinho. ‘We didn’t score and if the 1-0 result after the second half was an unfair result in my opinion, imagine 2-0 or 3-0. They were the best team in the first half, they controlled the game and created chances. We were comfortable on the ball but defensively we were quite fragile.

‘I’m the first one to be disappointed when all week you are speaking about movements, directions of the game, mechanisms, Aguero’s runs and positions, wingers coming from the outside to the inside, and then after 10 seconds he [Aguero] is in the face of Begovic. We were defensively poor in the first half.

‘In the second half everything changed. We brought our defensive line to the midfield line, we pressed them and had control of the game. We created chances and had space in midfield to play. They couldn’t cope with that. I’m nobody to analyse the opposing manager’s work but I don’t think anybody will misunderstand if I say we did very well.

‘They felt the result was in danger; their first change was a control change, Navas for Nasri, the second was defensive, Sterling for Demichelis. At that moment they wanted to keep the 1-0 and they were having trouble keeping it. We were punished by our mistakes for the second and third goals and we couldn’t capitalise on the good second half we had.’

The Chelsea manager felt Fernandinho was fortunate to avoid being sent off for an elbow on Diego Costa

‘My feeling? (It should have been a) red card. Yaya Toure should also have had a second yellow card, but the score was 3-0 so it had no relation to the result, but it had a relation to the rules.’

He explained why John Terry was replaced by Kurt Zouma at half-time

‘I had to decide on John or Cahill because Zouma is the fastest player we have in our defensive line. When you are going to play with a high block and you are asking your players to do that, the fastest player has to be on the pitch.

‘The point was not to bring John out but to bring Zouma in. I wanted to have my fastest player on the pitch and not on the bench because I knew they would play counter attack and long balls into Aguero. I knew I wanted my team to be dominant and to play in the opposition half.

‘I’m the one that plays John every game, made him captain, brought him back from a difficult situation with other managers. I’m the one who has the right to look at the game and say I want Zouma on the pitch. I was losing 1-0, in minute 35 I was trying to anticipate what I was going to say to the players, and ask the players at half-time, and immediately I had Zouma warming up because it was clear to me he had to play.’

There was positive news shortly after the game when the club announced we had completed the signing of Baba Rahman from Augsburg, and Mourinho explained why the defender will be an important addition to the squad.

‘It’s important because he’s a left-back and he can compete with Azpilicueta. At the same time, Azpi can also compete with Ivanovic for the right-back position. This player replaces Filipe Luis in terms of the balance of the squad. Hopefully next week he will be ready.’



Jose Mourinho's post-match interview with Chelsea TV is available to view below subject to Fan Club Plus membership.