Their new signings have settled immediately, seamlessly. They are purring, and as he identified after their mauling of Schalke on Tuesday night, they are playing with an unaccustomed flair at home and away with a capacity to take the breath away.
No, his only small error came on Saturday evening as he reflected on his side's 2-0 victory against West Brom. For 20 minutes, Chelsea had been wonderful. Cesc Fabregas -- a man who has played for a couple of teams that know a thing or two about aestheticism -- had described the first half as the "most beautiful" he had ever experienced.
Mourinho was also delighted by what he had seen, but he was keen to stress there are no points for beauty. "Do you remember a team that played fantastic football and won nothing? I don't think you remember them," he said. "You remember the ones that won without playing well."
As a summary of Mourinho's philosophy -- his belief that victory at all costs is the only priority -- that statement is pretty hard to beat. That is not to say his teams are not beautiful (they can be and have been) but the Portuguese wears his pragmatism on his sleeve.
This is a shame, because in the season where he has done everything right, this was wholly, entirely, comprehensively wrong. It is a misrepresentation of football's history. It ignores what may be the game's greatest glory: that winning trophies, collecting silverware, ensures greatness in the short term, but the only way to secure a lasting place in the sport's collective memory is to be beautiful.
The examples are numerous. Brazil's team in 1982 did not win anything except hearts and minds. The same could be said for the "Danish Dynamite" side four years later. Netherlands' Total Football team of the 1970s lost two World Cup finals, but their impact has been more enduring, their reputation more lofty, than either of the two sides that beat them.
Hungary's "Magic Magyars" of the 1950s and the conquerors of Wembley won Olympic gold but failed in their biggest game, the 1954 World Cup final. They occupy a higher post in history, though, than the West Germans, who defeated them at the last.
These are all teams for the ages, of course, but there are other examples, more recent if less significant, that enhance the point. Chile's escapades at the World Cup brought them only to the last 16, and Colombia got no further than the quarterfinals, but when the 2014 edition of the competition is remembered in 20 or 30 years' time, their contribution will not be judged merely in terms of where they finished.
Writing in The Observer this week, the excellent Daniel Taylor noted that eight books have been published on Liverpool's failed Premier League title bid last season. Two of them share the title "Make Us Dream" while others are variations on that theme. Only one, he pointed out, has been written about Manchester City, the side that actually won the league.
This is significant, but perhaps not in the way that Taylor intended. The defining factor in whether books are published is whether they will sell, and books about Liverpool consistently sell. Manchester City have a smaller fan base and less of a literary canon, and therefore are not quite as marketable a prospect.
But there is something else at play here, too, and the clue is in the titles. Football is escapism, it is reverie. It is about dreaming. The teams we remember most, the ones who sit highest in the pantheon, are the artists who make hearts soar, not the machines that roll to victory. Liverpool inspired their fans last season. Manchester City did not, or at least not to the same extent.
To borrow a parallel from the car world, you are more likely to remember your unreliable but thrilling Alfa Romeo than you are to sit and reminisce about how fuel efficient your Audi was.
The ideal, of course, is to be beautiful and to win things. These are the teams that are the touchstones for aspiration: Brazil in 1970, Arrigo Sacchi's AC Milan, Arsenal's Invincibles, Barcelona's dream teams under Johan Cruyff and then the reincarnation crafted by Pep Guardiola. That is what everyone is, or should be, trying to achieve.
There is a quote from Cruyff which applies here. As a player, the Dutchman always said that if his side was winning comfortably with the clock winding down, he would shoot not so as to score another goal, not to compound the victory, but with the intention of hitting the bar.
Another goal would just be another goal, he explained. Hitting the bar always brings the fans off their seats, whatever the score.
That is a belief, perhaps, that Mourinho would find almost impossible to understand. That sometimes it is better to hit the bar than to score a goal. That victory is not the only way to live long in the memory. That silver trophies and gold medals are not the only things that glitter in the light of time.
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