John Terry says that Jose Mourinho's first great Chelsea team would beat the current Manchester City side running away with the Premier League title under Pep Guardiola.
City are yet to taste defeat in the Premier League this season, having won 17 of their 18 matches and beaten all of their major rivals to surge 11 points clear at the top of the table, all while attracting praise for the stylish and expansive play that has yielded a spectacular tally of 56 goals.
Their form over the first half of the season has put Guardiola's men on course to break the Premier League records for points (95) and goals (103) in a campaign, leading many to suggest they might be the greatest team in the competition's history.
Terry, however, says the Chelsea teams he captained to back-to-back Premier League titles in 2004-05 and 2005-06 under Mourinho -- accumulating a record 95 points in the first campaign -- would be confident of beating this City side.
"I would say 2004-05 or 2005-06, those first two sides when Mourinho arrived at the club [would beat City]," Terry said during an appearance on Sky Sports' "Monday Night Football" TV show.
"We were never afraid to say: 'They'll have more possession than us,' but we were set, comfortable. The full-backs [William Gallas and Paulo Ferreira] would always go up the pitch, and [Claude] Makelele would always sit, which was great for us centre-backs.
"But we had great legs, great power, and we had the big man up front. Didier [Drogba] made such a difference. We had that ball into Didier, and he could hold it up, with the runners off him [Damien Duff and Arjen Robben], and [Frank] Lampard would be box-to-box game after game."
Key to the domestic dominance of those Chelsea teams was Mourinho, and Terry, currently at Aston Villa, paid tribute to the man he says is the best coach he has worked under in his career.
"He was the first one to come and revolutionise it at Chelsea," Terry said. "He would be the first in, 8 a.m., he'd be the one setting the cones out, and you'd come in as players and he'd be out there, if it was pouring with rain, getting his session organised.
"His standards were so high, and he demanded from everyone. The players, staff, people inside the medical team, everyone at the football club. He was on everything. His intensity and attention to detail was incredible.
"He 100 percent changed the way I thought about football. In his first session, the lads came in and we thought: 'Wow, that's a proper session.'"