Mourinho: We're where we want to be, but there's plenty of room to improve

You might forgive the players (and the supporters!) from getting carried away with Chelsea's impressive start to the season. Fourteen games, 11 wins -- and even more impressive than that is that the Blues have only spent 37 minutes behind in a match. Since mid-August.

But there's one man paid to keep his feet on the ground. Jose Mourinho is often accused of being too arrogant, of into his own hype, but it's clear that he's staying as sensible as possible here. There's not talk of going all season unbeaten or carrying away every piece of silverware possible, and there's plenty of how this team isn't where it needs to be yet:

In terms of the pragmatic objectives, the numbers and the results, we are where we want to be. In terms of numbers we are there but in terms of performance and the quality of the team – no team is perfect.

It’s not difficult for me to see where we need to improve. This team is giving me more work to bring them to the level of my previous Chelsea team. Almost all of that team were end products; top players. End products are one thing and players with great talent are another. That's why I came here. I knew exactly what I was going to have when I came here last year.

Source: Sky Sports.

In all three matches in which we've dropped points this year, Mourinho has bemoaned his team's lack of killer instinct. It's a fair criticism: Chelsea are good defensively and devastating going forward, but they're not doing enough to end games when they have a chance. If they had that, we wouldn't be looking at 23 points from 27 in the league -- we'd still have a 100 percent record.

It's on the manager to keep pushing the team towards perfection, even if he knows he'll never quite achieve it. I suspect that Mourinho is the sort of man who'll never be happy with the work he produces, and in a manager that's a good thing. Perfectionism is good news for the fans, even if it means more work for the players.