Andrew Fifield On the Premiership: Jose Mourinho is never hesitant in trumpeting his own talents, but few other Premiership managers can also boast his flair for self-deprecation.

In the midst of his worst league run since taking charge at Chelsea, Mourinho delivered a coruscating verdict on several members of his star-studded squad and then turned his fire on himself.

"I am the first one to know that at the moment we cannot defend," he muttered. "Maybe I am not such a good manager."

It is reckless to accept Mourinho's public utterances at face value, for he is a master in the art of the verbal showboat. Just consider his spectacularly self-important diatribe in the wake of securing his second Premiership title, delivered while the champagne was still fizzy, when he claimed that the dizzying expectations which swirl around Chelsea meant he was at the "worst club for a manager". Really? Try telling that to Alan Curbishley.

Yet this latest bout of introspection was not merely for show. For the first time in a career which has glided serenely through some potentially choppy waters, Mourinho is beginning to flounder. Forget Saturday's drubbing of poor, plucky Macclesfield. Chelsea's aura of invincibility has been corroded, their status as champions-in-waiting shredded by a combination of bad fortune, poor form and, yes, managerial misadventure.

While his peers have come to view public questioning of their methods and abilities as an occupational hazard, Mourinho is a stranger to such uncomfortable interrogation and the question now is how will he respond?

Mourinho is not a natural hunter. He prefers his teams to out-sprint their rivals rather than engage in the mucky business of hand-to-hand combat and, in that sense, his first two Premiership triumphs could not have been executed more smoothly. In both, Chelsea had eased into a position of impregnable strength by the time the Christmas decorations were pulled down, turning the traditional title race into a four-month long victory parade.

It was from this position of dominance that Mourinho was able to tighten his psychological hold on his supposed rivals.

In 2005, the sight of Manchester United performing a half-hearted lap of honour at Old Trafford moments after being thrashed by the recently-crowned champions prompted him to observe that similar behaviour in Portugal would be rewarded with a storm of bottles rather than applause.

A year later, Mourinho was asked whether he was concerned at United closing the gap on his team to seven points.

"I am more scared of bird flu than football," he replied, sporting the sort of deadpan expression which would put Leslie Nielsen to shame. "I have to buy masks and stuff."

Mourinho's remarks were pitched somewhere between wry humour and outright contempt, but the effect was to give both himself and his team an aura of utter imperturbability. All he had to do was light the blue-touch paper and stand well back: his rivals would explode for themselves.

But in a title race, psychological supremacy is worthless if it is not bulwarked by points and Chelsea currently do not have enough of them to inflict any serious blows. It is why all of Mourinho's recent baits - his prediction that Chelsea would be top by Christmas, that United had blown their best chance of pulling clear by drawing at Newcastle - have been swatted away by Alex Ferguson with such nonchalance.

When it comes to mind games, the United manager has little to fear from Mourinho. After all, this is the man who single-handedly reduced Kevin Keegan to a quivering wreck in the championship run-in 10 years ago. Indeed, Ferguson has already started to chip away at his rival's previously concrete-clad ego, suggesting that perhaps it is time for his wild public proclamations to be disregarded.

Ferguson can be excused a little mischief-making, given United's chastening experiences of the last two seasons, but there is a sense that the Scot is doing everything he can to maximise his current supremacy. He knows Chelsea's malaise is unlikely to prove terminal, although for that prophecy to hold true, Mourinho must up his own game, and considerably.

The Portuguese needs to successfully reintegrate John Terry and Petr Cech into a defence whose confidence has been shot to pieces after an uncharacteristically jittery spell, and he must show considerably more transfer acumen this month than he did in the summer, when the dazzling reputations of Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack blinded him to the fact that their galacticos reputations jarred with Chelsea's team ethic.

But most of all, Mourinho must prove that his reputation as one of the world's foremost managerial minds is not all bluster. It is time for him to ditch the style - including his futile attempts to rile Ferguson - and show some substance.