Jose Mourinho believes Manchester United are now out of the English Premier League title race after Chelsea's rather comfortable 3-1 victory at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
A hat-trick from Samuel Eto'o gave Chelsea three points against United, who yet again failed to convince going forward, while looking brittle at the back.
"Man United is Man United, mathematically it is possible, but it is hard," Mourinho told Sky Sports. "It is 14 for Arsenal, but also 13 for City and 12 to us, so maybe one team might collapse, but for all three teams to collapse to do that and lose so many points, I think is difficult.
"So for them I think it is the fight to finish top four which I think they can do. It is difficult, but with that pride and tradition they will fight and hopefully they win against the other contenders as we don't play against them in the league."
The victory was also Mourinho's 100th in the Premier League, with the Portuguese the quickest to the landmark in just his 142nd game. However, Mourinho was just happy to pick up the three points, and closing the gap on Arsenal and City, after the two had extended their lead on Saturday.
"It means we won today [Sunday], I don't care about records, I want to win the next match," Mourinho said. "It's a coincidence because the first was against Man United and the 100th was against Man United.
"The previous owner of the record was Man United manager [Sir Alex Ferguson], so it's a coincidence, but the most important thing is that these 100 matches gave Chelsea 300 points, and today was very important for us.
"I'm delighted with the three points, of course I love it when one of my players becomes a special player in the match and it's a fantastic moment for Samuel, scoring a hat-trick against Man United.
"I think we deserved to win, but we didn't deserve to be winning 2-0 at half time and they didn't deserve to be losing 2-0 at half time. They started the match better than us and they were a bit unlucky that we scored at the moment.
"After that the game was different, we controlled the first half and when we scored the second goal we were in a great position. The third goal basically killed the game but after that they were coming at us."
Eto'o was the difference in the game, with his poacher's instinct coming to the fore in the second and third goals.
"Fernando [Torres] is very dangerous with space, he's more powerful than Samuel but I didn't think Man United were coming here to give me spaces behind their defensive line, they came here to be compact," said Mourinho on the reasons behind he chose to start with Eto'o.
"I was expecting [Darren] Fletcher not [Phil] Jones, but it's basically the same. I feel Samuel is a player with more technical ability and better in small spaces, his movement in small spaces is different to Fernando. It was a difficult decision because Fernando is scoring goals but my feeling, for this game, was that Samuel was more adaptive."
