Jose Mourinho says Chelsea deserve to be top at the halfway point

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho says he is delighted with how his team have performed over the first half of the season.

The Premier League sides have all now played each other once and the first return fixtures of the season will be on New Year’s Day, when Chelsea travel to Tottenham.

The Blues have set the pace over the first half of the campaign and, although what was once an eight-point lead has been trimmed to three by Manchester City, Mourinho is happy with how things are going.

"Everybody starts with the same points and, if we have one more point than them, we did well," he said.

"We are top of the league at the end of the first round because we deserve it and because it is a consequence of what we did.

"Chelsea is playing very well since the beginning of the season. That's the only thing we work at, the only thing we concentrate on.

"And, in the second part of the season, we are going to try to do exactly the same thing.

"Against Tottenham, we will be there again trying to get a good result.”

Chelsea’s lead has been cut due to their failure to take maximum points from three of their last four away games, although they only lost one of those fixtures (at Newcastle).

But Mourinho said: “We had very difficult fixtures away from home.

"We lost one game that we didn't deserve to lose and we are doing well." ...SkySports