Mourinho confirms striker interest, opens up about summer plans

Now that the Champions League final has been played (congratulations, Barcelona), we can finally dive head first into silly season. It's fitting, then, that Jose Mourinho spoke about his summer plans in a fantastic interview with The Sunday Times:

'It will be difficult to find players to go straight into the team, because it's not easy to find a better striker than Diego, a better keeper than Courtois, a better midfielder than Matic or Fabregas. It's not easy to do what we did last season, where we bought two or three players and they went straight into the team.'

'This season is about improving the squad. This season is about improving the squad, bringing players to make us more consistent, so we don't go through difficult periods like last season when we had crucial injuries. We have to try and protect the situation by adding two or three players.'

'We will be better. I don't see our team losing players. We lost a striker who scored four goals in the Premier League, but three of these goals meant important points for us. So we have to buy a striker because we want to have three strikers of a good level.'

That sounds an awful lot like Mourinho hinting at more rotation next season, as long as he can add depth that he trusts. That's probably not a great sign for some of the bench parts that couldn't get a match this campaign. He also (according to The Times) confirmed interest in Radamel Falcao while giving these quotes.

Reading between the lines, it also sounds as if Mourinho is tempering expectations of a big summer window, in which we add multiple players such as Gareth Bale or Paul Pogba that would walk into the Chelsea XI, instead suggesting we'll see a very similar group to the one that lost just four times last season. He's certainly not ruling out a big move or two, but he's clearly happier with his squad at this point than he was a year ago.