Jose Mourinho praises Chelsea's grit against Aston Villa

Jose Mourinho was pleased with Chelsea’s grit in the 2-1 home win over Aston Villa

Jose Mourinho admitted his Chelsea side had ‘won ugly’ as they scraped a 2-1 win over Aston Villa at home at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea failed to take advantage of their first half dominance and had to hold on to secure the win, and they could easily have conceded a penalty in the dying minutes as Aston Villa appealed for handball against John Terry inside the Chelsea box.

Mourinho pointed out that he had enjoyed the game and it was the reason he had returned to the Premier League.

He said: “In matches at the Bernebau, Real Madrid win every match and usually very comfortably.

“This is what I missed about the Premier League. This was hard.”

Mourinho also conceded that his side were lucky to claim all three points after Branislav Ivanovic scored the winner in the second half.

“Maybe they deserved a point in the end, it wouldn’t have been unfair,” he continued.

“They have their style which is not my style. They have a special player in Benteke and they put long balls into him – he makes a lot of fouls as do their defenders so it’s difficult to have a game of quality with them.

“But they are good on counter-attack. The moment they get the ball they are very dangerous and can score a lot of goals so we had a plan not to give them chance to counter.

“The long ball game, you can’t control. The game becomes ugly, but we fought a lot. The players tried to adapt and gave their life to get the three points.

“Sometimes you have to win on effort rather than quality.”