The Blues sit two points clear at the top of the Premier League table after 21 games and can extend their lead over Manchester City – who don’t play until Sunday – with a win over Swansea on Saturday.
And despite insisting his side must improve, Mourinho is happy with his side and the psychological state in the midst of a run that sees them having taken just one win in five away games.
“We are top of the league since day one,” Mourinho said.
“There since the first minute of the season, and there because we deserve to be there, lots of difficult matches and I know you cannot win every match.
“This is a difficult period for us – Newcastle away, Tottenham away, Southampton away, Stoke away, now Swansea away – a very difficult period.
“We know it’s very difficult to keep a run of consecutive victories.
“I think we showed clearly that we were not in psychological problem with the fact the distance to Man city, and Man United was reduced.
“We were not in trouble, we were always in control of our emotions and we are ready for the second part of the season.
“We have to improve always, we have to improve always but what we were as a team was enough to be top of the league on the 15th of January, was good enough to reach our objectives to be top of the league to be alive in the three knockout competitions, so was good enough.
“But always we need always to improve.
“And young players, young team, we have lots of space to improve. I would say not just this season, next season and the next season.
“We are not favourites, we are candidates, since day one we are candidates, but if in this moment we are two points behind rather than two points ahead I say the same thing.
“We want to be, we will fight for the title until mathematically – we did that last season but last season we were not convinced that our potential was enough to fight for the title.
“This season we are convinced – so we are going to fight and we are going to try.”
And Mourinho insists playing before City do is not something that comes into the thinking and that the big teams aren’t put off by the others picking up points.
He added: “I don’t think really the big boys feel too much under pressure.
“We are big boys, they are big boys, I don’t think it really effects us a lot the result of the other one.
“We have a job to do, they have a job to do, it doesn’t matter the result of one, we know that we have to try to win matches – so I think if we can get points tomorrow and make the difference more than two points I don’t think that will effect Man City game in relation to Arsenal.”
