Is experience key in the Premier League title race?

Jose Mourinho is fully sure. Winning a title doesn't ultimately come down to quality but conviction.

"To play when you have no pressure, to play when you want to finish third, fourth, fifth -- that's easy," the Chelsea manager said last week. "To play with pressure and responsibility to try and win the title is more difficult."

That theme of the "responsibility" required to lift a league trophy, and grasping the nettle in the games that really matter, is one Mourinho has been warming to of late. He has mentioned it several times in the past few weeks, and made a particular point of it after his side's resolute 3-1 comeback against Southampton.

That may well be just the first mind game of this developing title race, given that Chelsea don't seem to have the ultimate quality of Manchester City or the form of Arsenal, and it no doubt suits the Portuguese to send out a few ripples regarding the one advantage he enjoys above almost everyone else.

Mourinho is one of only two managers in the division, along with Arsene Wenger, to know what it takes to win a title. He is one of the few who can speak with any authority on what it takes.

That knowledge could yet be powerful given that, otherwise, this is a season of so many unknowns.

It is a feeling only deepened by the fact there hasn't yet been a single round of fixtures when all of the top sides have won. That unpredictability continues to make it all feel so open, as if there is very little you can really place all that much value in to stay the course.

It was telling that, after Arsenal drew with Everton and thereby failed to win at home for the first time since the opening day, Wenger was still asked by some whether he was capable of a challenge right until the end.

That may be unfair, but it is also conversely one of the few inevitabilities of this campaign. Unlike virtually any season for the last two decades, there is no lasting truth to fall back on. We no longer know an Alex Ferguson Manchester United are primed to maximise anyone else's mistakes. The Scot previously set the baseline, but now it is wavering all over the place. It still feels as if anything is possible.

That is undeniably refreshing after so many seasons in which revenue conditioned the final table, even if it feels much longer than 32 years since the other extreme: Aston Villa winning the 1981 league despite losing seven of their last 10 games.

This campaign figures to be somewhere in between, as reflected by the character of the competitors.

With every challenger, there are positives and negatives. It remains extremely difficult to know which will be more exacting.

Chelsea, for example, have Mourinho's winning experience and mentality but also an imbalanced squad. Their structural flaws have seemed to allow a different problem to arise every two weeks, from attack through the centre to the backline.

Manchester City, by contrast, possess a group that have won the league together as well as the potential for the highest-quality football -- but also a capacity for the most calamitous dips and a manager in Manuel Pellegrini who hasn't yet won a European title race.

A lack of trophies is not the only question David Moyes faces. His United squad may have 80 league medals among them but also a 13-point gap to overcome. It is difficult not to think they should forget the league this year. Read more