'We beat the current Chelsea team!' - Jose Mourinho reveals message from 2004/05 Premier League winner claiming a team of 45-year-old's could beat Enzo Maresca's Blues

Mourinho revealed the tongue-in-cheek text exchange during an interview that he, John Terry and Frank Lampard conducted with The Telegraph, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Blues' first Premier League title.

The Special One didn't name the player, but he did say the ace was pushing 45-years-old. Mourinho's Chelsea were never short on confidence, taking on their manager's persona en route to a then-record 95 point tally.

Mourinho said: "One of these players of 2004-05, a few weeks ago, when Chelsea played Arsenal. One of the guys wrote me a message. I won’t tell you who it is, but the guy is now, I say, 45 years old, something like that. All of them are more or less 45. And one of them wrote to me, it was not John or Frank, and told me ‘boss, if you got together the 2004-05 team now and went on a training camp for two weeks, we would beat the current Chelsea team’.

"Of course, it was a joke. But this was a message of we were so good, we were so, so strong that 45 years old, we train for two weeks and we beat the current Chelsea team. Between us, we are still a team.”

The Chelsea defence of 2004/05, marshalled by Terry and his centre half partner Ricardo Carvalho, remain the Premier League's greatest rearguard. The Blues conceded just 15 goals during their campaign.