The secret to Jose Mourinho's first Premier League title with Chelsea

1/8

Glen Johnson has revealed how Jose Mourinho's fear factor spurred Chelsea on to winning their first Premier League title in 2005.

Thursday marks 15 years to the day since Frank Lampard's brace at Bolton secured the first of the club's three Premier League titles during Mourinho's two spells at Stamford Bridge.

Johnson made 16 League appearances across the title-winning campaign, and 39 under Mourinho in all competitions across his time in west London.

The former England international has hailed Mourinho's refreshing approach to management and explained how, despite his charisma, there was always an element of fear within the squad.

"Mourinho was an absolutely brilliant coach and what I really enjoyed was how refreshing everything he did was," Johnson wrote in a blog for BETDAQ.

"The methods he used were different to anything we’d experienced before, but it really didn’t take long to adjust to them.

"When I first met him I didn’t really know much about him or who he was and it was very unique to meet a manager who had the charisma that Jose had.

"None of us really knew how to take it, but we learnt quickly how he was and the way he wanted to do things.

"Jose was clever in the fact that he would be nice to everyone, but there was a dark side that brought a fear factor to the squad.

"Even the more high-profile players were wary of him and fearful of getting on the wrong side of him. You didn’t want to disappoint him and that’s what spurred us on.

"We were so confident and although we didn’t necessarily blow teams away, we always thought we were going to win.

"In any sport, confidence is huge and if you give the best players confidence then who’s going to stop them?

Getty Images

"That’s credit to Mourinho in the way he made us feel and the fact that he got us enjoying training.

"Everyone was just riding the crest of a wave and we all believed in what he said to us."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in