Jose Mourinho’s aim is never to play the prettiest football, it’s about getting results. Even with the roster of players he has to work with, he’s never fully utilized all of their talents together consistently. On occasion Chelsea play absolutely mesmerizing football, but most of their games end up as the 1-0 win against Palace did, with Chelsea content to sit and hold their advantage. But when your team only loses two Premier League games all season, all that’s left to do is applaud.

There will be days when Chelsea need to play some good soccer in order to get themselves out of trouble, such as their road days at Hull City and Leicester City this season. But when the object of the game is to get results, Jose Mourinho’s tactics and style set his teams up perfectly for success. Given the right group of players who are willing to buy into this tactical set-up, he can make magic happen.

He was able to perfectly paint the picture of last season as a failure of his squad as opposed to his own failure, and when the narrative shifted, it shifted to exactly where he wanted it to. He and Chelsea therefore had no excuses this season – they had to win the title or else Mourinho would have been in the firing line. Their Champions League failures almost seem completely distant, despite that being an almost unacceptable failure. Mourinho and Chelsea were certainly helped by the rest of the title contenders ending up as mediocre, pretenders or flat inconsistent, but that does not mean any of this discussion should take away from Chelsea’s successes this season.

Why was the discussion for so long at the beginning of the season tailored towards whether Chelsea could finish the season unbeaten? It wasn’t because of everyone else; it was because Mourinho with the right mix of players can set up his teams to be practically impenetrable. The cries of “boring, boring Chelsea” ring hollow when his teams can score when they need to and yet never lose the defensive solidity that a Mourinho team has become so known for. Jose has done all of that, even as he’s used a consistent squad of only 22 players – a truly amazing accomplishment considering the amount of fixtures his team have had to play.

Chelsea needed to win the title this season not only because of their squad, but because Mourinho needed to prove his own doubters wrong. Why did he come back to England to finish third in the Premier League, fall short in the Champions League and go trophy-less with a second rate squad? He came back to prove himself again as a manager in the most competitive league in the world, and he’s done so again.

His next goal is to take Chelsea to even greater heights, and that means success in Europe. He and Chelsea have each won the Champions League without each other, and winning it together would be the final trophy left unclaimed by Mourinho at Stamford Bridge. His squad needs to be deeper in order to achieve that, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Chelsea aren’t boring, they’re pragmatic and do what they need to do to win titles. They’ve done just that this season. They’re plenty worthy even with the qualms about their style.

The trouble is building on these successes, and now it’s on Jose Mourinho to do just that.