Jose Mourinho says retaining the Premier League title is an "impossible mission" for Chelsea, suggesting Hollywood star Tom Cruise might have a better chance of guiding the team to success.

Diego Costa scored the only goal as Chelsea ended a run of three successive top-flight defeats with a 1-0 victory over Norwich City on Saturday, moving the champions 15th in the table.

Asked whether his side could recover enough to challenge for the title again this season, Mourinho made reference to the Mission Impossible film franchise.

"We have to go game after game," he said. "The fourth position for me is not an impossible mission.

"If you ask me about the title, I would say [it is an] impossible mission. Maybe Tom Cruise can do it."

Chelsea controlled long spells against Norwich without putting the game to bed after Costa's 64th-minute strike, which made for some tense moments late on.

"We didn't deserve the heartbeats of the last four minutes," he added. "I think we deserved to be enjoying the last four minutes with a two, three or 4-0 result, relaxed. But we couldn't.

"Once more the relation between the way play and the number of goals we score, that relation is not good. We should score three, four or five goals, and we didn't.

"But we could cope with the last five minutes, we could cope with that pressure because the pressure was there. I was feeling it and the players were feeling it too.

"We coped well with that and we got the result that we need very, very much."