Jose Mourinho on whether Diego Costa will start against Manchester City

Jose Mourinho speaks to media ahead of Chelsea’s Premier League tie against Manchester City.

Diego Costa has already proven his mettle in the Premier League with brilliant goalscoring form, but his constant struggle with his muscle injury has been a worrying matter for Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho.

Speaking to the media ahead of their tie against current champions Manchester City on Sunday, Mourinho said, “Everybody is ready to play. Diego is not in the best condition, but he will start the game. He plays this game, he won’t play against Bolton, and he plays against Aston Villa. Let’s see his evolution.”

The medical department are doing their best, the player is fantastic in trying to play and being available for the team. We have to try to protect him until he gets completely fit,” he added.

Earlier, Mourinho had explained that his decision to start Didier Drogba in their opening UEFA Champions League game against Schalke was not to save Costa for Sunday’s clash, but because of medical reasons.

“Costa has a problem," Mourinho said on Thursday. "If he has one week to let the muscle recover he can start a game. Playing on Saturday, three days is not enough for him to recover.”

"It was not to protect for the game Sunday [at Manchester City] it was because today he was not in a condition to start the game."

On Manchester City match

“It’s one more game, three more points,” said Mourinho. “Obviously when matches are between title contenders every point makes a difference. Last weekend Arsenal and City got one point each, nobody got three. These matches in the end can be important, but if you analyse with a simple pragmatic view it’s one game, three points, no more than that.”

“For the title it’s not just City, there are other teams in this race,” he added. “Other clubs have exactly the same ambition as Chelsea and City. Last season we had the experience and we know what it is to win there and to lose there. I’m not exhaustively going through every second of these two matches with the players. I did it myself to try to identify the differences between the two to help us understand why we were so strong in the first game and not so strong in the second one.”

“But last season is last season; statistics belong to history, not to the future. What happened last year has no relation to this season. Can we go there and win like we did last season? Obviously we can. But we can also lose. We respect them totally because they deserve that respect. At the same time, we believe in ourselves and we want to win.”