Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho backs Leicester City to avoid relegation

Chelsea will take another big step towards the Premier League title if they win at relegation-threatened Leicester City on 29 April but manager Jose Mourinho expects their opponents to stay up whatever the result.

Leicester, who were bottom from the end of November 2014 until earlier in April, have climbed out of the drop zone after winning their last four matches and Mourinho said he was surprised they were ever there in the first place.

He said: "I was surprised with their bad position, I was surprised because for me it is a good team, good team, good players. I played them very early in the season at Stamford Bridge and I could immediately feel the quality of the team.

"I'm not surprised they are out of the relegation zone and I will be not surprised when they keep [in] the division."

Chelsea's immediate targets are very different from Leicester's, with Mourinho's Champions-elect team needing six points to guarantee the title while Nigel Pearson's men need as many as possible to avoid an immediate Championship return.

On 26 April, Chelsea plucked a performance straight from the Mourinho textbook as they grafted to a 0-0 draw at Arsenal, with a result that leaves them almost certain to claim the title.

It was not particularly pleasing on the eye but the fact Arsenal's best two chances fell to a central defender and a late substitute spoke volumes for the control Chelsea enjoyed against a side boasting the creative talents of Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey and Santi Cazorla.

'Boring, boring' criticism

Mourinho's approach was never to everyone's liking during his first spell at Chelsea when he won consecutive league titles from 2004-06 and there were chants of "boring, boring" from Arsenal's fans towards the end.

At his post-match press conference at the Emirates, the Portuguese said: "Boring is 10 years without a Premier League title – that's boring."

On 27 April, he expanded further, insisting his side are the best in the division. "If a good team is a team with more points we are the best team. If a good team is a team with more victories we are the best team. If the best team is the team with less defeats we are the best team. If the best team is the champion, not yet but if the best team is the team that leads, we are the best team," Mourinho said.

"So in any point of analysis in any criteria you can find we are the best team or the second best team, so it's as simple as that.

"Everybody speaks 'oh my team played fantastically well, we had great ball possession' or 'we build very well', good. It looks like the goals are not there and this is a big contradiction, because you speak about boring and you consider boring a team that scores so many goals as we do, but you don't consider boring a team that has 70% of the ball possession and cannot win the game.

"This is quite a big contradiction and I ask myself in the future, when I am a grandad and I am at home with my grandsons, maybe football is played without goals.

"If a team is boring or if a team is not boring, if the number of goals is what decides that, we have in the Premier League 18 teams that are more boring than us."