Jose begins Pre-Season Mind Games With Attacks On Arsenal's Transfers. Hahaaaa! Must Read

Jose Mourinho has signalled the start of hostilities ahead of the new football season, with a brace of warning shots across the bows of two of his main rivals in this year's title race.

In an interview with several national newspapers, the Portuguese manager was back to his prickly best, taking issue with Arsene Wenger's complaints over transfer spending and responding to criticism from Man City boss Manuel Pellegrini.

"Jose Mourinho has not changed," writes Matt Hughes of The Times. "What you see on the television and the touchline is what you get in the flesh. Mourinho is amusing, scathing, driven and intense, but never mellow."

The theme of the interview is the manager's "soaring expectations and intolerance of those who fall short", but his most eye-catching comments relate to his old adversary Wenger, who is poised to mount Arsenal's biggest title push for a decade.

Mourinho has shown little respect for Wenger over the years, and it is clear that he regards the Arsenal manager as a hypocrite, says Hughes.

Days after Wenger claimed that Manchester United had abandoned their policy of developing home-grown talents and were chasing short-term success with a series of expensive signings, Mourinho was at pains to point out that the Gunners have forked out almost £150m in two years.

If you add up the amounts clubs have spent in the last three or four years I think maybe you will find a surprise, said the Chelsea boss. If you put [Mesut] Ozil plus Alexis Sanchez, plus [Calum] Chambers, plus Mathieu Debuchy, you will find a surprise. It's a fantastic squad with good players, fantastic goalkeeper, they are more than ready to be a title contenders. Get a calculator. That is the easiest thing, it leaves no space for speculation.

The "calculator" jibe may not be as barbed as Mourinho's previous "voyeur" and "specialist in failure" insults, but it means that the Chelsea boss has "reopened his feud" with Wenger, says John Percy of the Daily Telegraph. Mourinho faced the Arsenal manager in last Sunday's Community Shield and wasted no time in resuming the mind games, he notes.

The Chelsea boss has begun the mind games before the Premier League season.