Chelsea to be a better team through trust, loyalty, confidence, stability

The 2015-16 Premier League season is about to kick off in a few hours.  Just enough time for a few thoughts from the manager then.

"It's dangerous. I think that saying, is right, the saying that: 'If you stand still, you get worse'. It's right, but the same people can move forward."

"You don't need to buy 10 players to be a better team. You can be a better team with one or two new players and be a better team, with the same people."

-Jose Mourinho; source: FourFourTwo

Mourinho has been working on this 'individual improvement needed from every player' theme for the past few weeks.  Other teams may have closed the gap that allowed us to waltz to last year's title, but that doesn't necessarily make Chelsea worse.  It does make defending the title harder, but we do have the only manager other than Sir Alex Ferguson to have accomplished that in the last 30 years.

"The biggest advantage I hope is for the players to think: 'My club and my manager trust me so much. They were so loyal to me and they want to show me they have a good memory and they don't forget what I did last year. They don't spend loads of money, they don't sell me, they don't kick me out, they want to keep me, they believe in me, so now it's my time, it's our time to give it back. To give my manager and my club a proper answer,'"

"That's most important, the second thing, the team has some routine, some tactical mechanisms and is based on stability, it's not based on a quick improvement like bringing a lot of new players can help to do. It's based on stability."

-Jose Mourinho; source: FourFourTwo

You might think that's a case of simply putting a positive spin on a summer of zero major signings (even if we assume Baba Rahman and/or John Stones are incoming), but Mourinho has been talking about such things since before the end of last season.  This summer was never meant to be about major signings, and, well, it hasn't been.

So it's down to last year's heroes to be even bigger heroes this year.  The young need to improve, the old need to not decline, and the new depth — including a healthy Ramires and Mikel, plus youngsters Traoré, Loftus-Cheek, and even Ola Aina — need to be able to take on some of the burden when necessary.  A successful season will be a challenge (just like it is every year), but that's why we have some of the best in the business at our disposal.