Why is it Jose Mourinho can't help but talk about Chelsea every few weeks?

After his sides first dropped points of the season came away at Stoke on Saturday, the man formerly known as the Special One saw fit to talk about his old employers once more.

On this occasion, though, he seemed to take exception with their methods of winning the title. Methods that have never bothered him en route to silverware in the past.

"We know that if you look in a pragmatic way, you see the last winners of the Premier League, the last winners of the Premier League, they did not play attacking football. They played defensive football and counter-attack football." Mourinho said without actually saying Chelsea's name.

“So according to the results, that is the way to win the Premier League.

“We try to play according to the qualities of our players. We try to play positive, we try to play good, but we try to win.

“If one day to win we have to play defensive football, we have to do it. And if we go to Stoke and Stoke in some moments of the match, they put us under pressure and they are dominant, we have to be humble and we have to be pragmatic and we have to face the reality.

“If you ask me, are we going to go there and play with seven at the back, like some teams do, five plus two? No, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to try and play well and score goals.

“But if our opponent is better than us and dominant, we are humble enough to transform our way of playing to play for a result.”

Mourinho may believe United try and play positive, but that certainly wasn't always the case last season.

Apart from countless games where they were 0-0 at half-time at Old Trafford, vivid memories of the Red Devils clinging on for dear life against Liverpool at Anfield during Monday Night Football will linger for a while yet.