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Jose Mourinho warns Chelsea's performances will not be pretty

Jose Mourinho of Chelsea gestures
Image: Jose Mourinho says players have to dig deep to earn rewards

Jose Mourinho has warned Chelsea's performances will not be pretty as he seeks to move on from their recent struggles.

Two weeks after a loss to Southampton prompted a vote of confidence in the manager - the first of Roman Abramovich's 12-year ownership - the champions beat Aston Villa 2-0 at Stamford Bridge.

Mourinho dropped Eden Hazard to the substitutes' bench and afterwards encouraged the playmaker to improve his work-rate as the Blues boss opted for a more pragmatic approach.

Mourinho told the club's website: "In this moment it's difficult to be brilliant before we have points. What produces results is both quality, plus the other things.

"When you are not able to show your quality, you have always to be able to show the other things. In between quality in some moments and fantastic work by the team and the fantastic desire to win the game, the performance was solid, not brilliant.

"They wanted to win, they wanted to show that they wanted to win, they wanted to show they are together and ready to fight. I'm really happy because it was two long weeks after the last defeat."

'Mourinho made gutsy call'
'Mourinho made gutsy call'

The Sunday Supplement panel discussed Jose Mourinho's "gutsy" decision to drop Eden Hazard

Chelsea next play Dynamo Kiev in Champions League Group G on Tuesday, with Mourinho unhappy that his side have not had more grace before their European date.

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He said: "In this moment we are losing 24 hours to Dynamo, like we did against Porto. Porto played Friday, Dynamo played Friday. We played in Newcastle on Saturday [prior to Porto]; we played again on Saturday.

"We are losing 24 hours. We have to try to recover that with other ingredients and the ingredients will be the same - fantastic spirit. Let's start from that point."

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