Great result against Norwich today, Jose:

And below is a snapshot from an article from The Telegraph published at the start of the season:

I came across this tweet tonight and it got me thinking about Jose Mourinho:

Jose Mourinho – 2 trophies won out of a possible 14 available in the last 4 years. £272,440,000 spent in that time. #specialistinfailure

— Olayinka's godfather (@i_am_afiz) April 30, 2014

Mourinho is a man who divides opinion, you either love him or hate him. He is a hypocrite, outspoken and is an expert at playing the press.

And that is exactly how he likes it.

Every step he takes has been carefully planned, and Liverpool is the perfect example. He started the mind games a week earlier, declaring to the world that he was going to play his reserves in the Premier League game at Anfield. He dismissed the Premier League, saying his priority was Europe. What happens next? A Mourinho masterclass where they go to the home of the league leaders and sweep them aside 2-0.

But tonight, Athletico Madrid were ruthless and ended any hopes of Chelsea and Mourinho lifting the Champions League come May.

And when I saw the Tweet from Olayinka’s godfather (I have no idea what the username means) it made a very good point. He won the Champions League with FC Porto and Inter Milan, and he is renowned for being a “winner”. But what has he won over the last 4 seasons?

This season, barring a massive collapse by Manchester City and Liverpool, he will end up trophy-less. And last season, with an expensive and extremely talented Real Madrid side, he did the same as he did with Chelsea this season – he reached the semi-finals of the Champions League and won nothing domestically.

The season before, he won La Liga in what is/was essentially a two team league. And the season before, he won the Copa del Rey.

So that’s two major trophies in the last 4 seasons. If Arsenal manage to win the FA Cup this May, then Arsene Wenger who was labelled “a specialist in failure” will have won one major honour – only one less than the great Jose Mourinho.

And maybe more importantly, Arsene Wenger hasn’t spent anywhere near the £280 million the “special one” over the last 4 seasons.

So ask yourself this, who is the real “specialist in failure?”.

After the defeat to Everton, Arsenal were in a bad way. We had been embarrassed at Goodison Park and more importantly given the advantage to the Merseyside club in the race for fourth place.

Two weeks on and how things have changed. We are in the final of the FA Cup, and with Everton’s defeat to Southampton on Saturday, a win against Newcastle would give us a massive 4 point gap with only 2 games to play. So barring a massive disaster, we should secure 4th place.

Tonight we are at home to Newcastle United, the week after we’re up against West Brom (again at home) and then we have Norwich on the last day of the season. Then of course, we have Hull City Tigers in the FA Cup final.

So Arsenal are 4 victories away from immortality.

4 wins guarantees Champions League football next season, ensuring we’re still competing with Europe’s elite and can attract the very best players, and we will have won a major trophy for the first time since 2005.

With all the doom and gloom after our first Premier League fixture against Aston Villa, that would not be a bad season after all.

After the result at Anfield yesterday, it looks like Liverpool may have blown their chance to win the Premier League. Manchester City are favourites now to win it and Chelsea will be right in there.

Liverpool fans have been cheering and bigging up their team for most of the season and have overall probably had more enjoyable seasons. But if they don’t win the league and we win the FA Cup, we would have had a more successful season than them.

After Chelsea played Athletico Madrid in the Champions League Jose Mourinho decided to play his mind games. He knows exactly what he’s doing and came out to the whole world and declared the second leg of the Champions League semi-final was his priority and he would rest key players at Anfield.

Jose Mourinho is the king of hype and predictably the press went crazy – Manchester City were reportedly “unhappy” at this revelation and it was the most talked about football topic for the last few days. And as expected, Liverpool didn’t know what was going on.

Mourinho’s aim was to give something to think about and that is exactly what happened. Another aim was to put all the pressure on Liverpool and remove any expectations on his Chelsea side. After all, Liverpool only needed a draw remember.

The Chelsea manager was fooling nobody with rhetoric about “not caring about the Premier League” but it was making headlines and getting press. We all know Mourinho is a winner and his record against the top sides is almost perfect.

The line up Chelsea started with was missing some big players, but they have a strong squad and predictably parked the bus. The reasons for this were twofold; it allowed Chelsea to ensure they got a result and it also justified his “weakened” selection.

Jose Mourinho clearly got to Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers because the complaints after the game were that “Chelsea parked two buses”, “Liverpool try to play football the right way” and “Chelsea were time-wasting”. All true and valid points, but the bottom line was Liverpool only needed a draw. All the hype surrounding Mourinho obviously got to Liverpool because they tried to win the game, and that was their downfall.

If you only need a point and Chelsea are “parking two buses” and clearly setup for the counter-attack, then surely playing out a dull-as-dish-water draw would have done? Chelsea posed no real attacking threat (the first goal was a mistake and the second on the break when Liverpool threw everyone forward) so why play into their hands? Liverpool’s fantastic recent run went to their heads and they believed their own hype.

If Chelsea only needed a draw and were playing at home you can bet your house that he wouldn’t have approached the game the same way Brendan Rodgers did.

The result of all this is that Liverpool no longer have the title in their own hands.

I thought it would be interesting to conduct a poll and see what the consensus was amongst the Arsenal fans – if you only had one choice, would you pick FA Cup glory (and a 5th place finish) or have Champions League football next season?

Barring any real calamity (which lets be honest, Arsenal are perfectly capable of doing) we should be on course to do both. We face Hull City Tigers in the FA Cup Final, and have a one point advantage over Everton in the race for fourth place, who theoretically have the tougher fixtures remaining.

But what if we had to prioritise and choose one over the other?

Which one would you want the most?

Would it be the first major trophy in 9 seasons? Which would end Arsenal’s barren spell and hopefully provide a springboard for greater success?

Or would you rather sacrifice the FA Cup and have guaranteed Champions League football next season? Maybe Champions League football is more important because it guarantees vital revenue the club depends upon and more importantly, it attracts the best players which is going to be essential if we are looking to build on this season and add even more world class players (such as Özil) to Arsenal.

So what’s your choice?

Cast your vote below and leave your thoughts in the comments section!