'I will find him (Arsene Wenger) one day outside a football pitch and I will break his face ...'You know, he is a specialist in failure. Eight years without a piece of silverware, that's failure.' - Jose Mourinho

Rob Beasley is the sports journalist who knows better than anyone what makes Jose Mourinho tick.

He had a regular audience with the Special One and they exchanged many emails and text messages.

These are revealed in an explosive new book which is being serialised by Sportsmail and give a fascinating insight into the Manchester United manager's mind.


When you publicly denounce someone as a 'specialist in failure' and a 'voyeur', it is abundantly clear you don't like them much.

What must Jose Mourinho's views on Arsene Wenger be like away from the cameras and microphones? Unsurprisingly, they're even more damning and the gloves have been well and truly off whenever the matter of Monsieur Wenger has been raised.

A couple of times Jose even talked about wanting to physically fight the Frenchman. That's how bitter and basic their rivalry has become over the years.

It's a deep dislike that has festered into one of the longest-running feuds in football, with the pair clashing ever since Mourinho first arrived in England in 2004.


Mourinho saw this as yet more evidence of Wenger's obsession with all things Chelsea but for once he bit his tongue. That all changed the following month.

Wenger had made a thinly disguised dig about Mourinho deliberately playing down Chelsea's chances of being crowned champions because of a 'fear to fail'. It was too much for the ultra-competitive Mourinho to resist, so when he was asked about Wenger's comments he let fly.

'You know, he is a specialist in failure. Eight years without a piece of silverware, that's failure. If I do that at Chelsea I leave London and I don't come back.'

Mourinho had carried out a cold-blooded assassination of his enemy in broad daylight. Inevitably it was too gory for some, who believed Jose's brutal honesty was too vicious and vindictive. Not to him it wasn't.

A few days later he was still pumped up about it all, telling me: 'When Mr Wenger criticises CFC and Man United over the deal with Mata...I will find him one day outside a football pitch and I will break his face.'

Sure enough, a few weeks later Jose did give Wenger a beating.

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