We’ve Got Quality To Recover – Thibaut Courtois Backs Chelsea Following Defeat

Chelsea, four-time Premier League winners in the last decade, is approaching the midway point of the season an alarming 17 points behind surprise leader Leicester, which was itself fighting relegation for much of last season.

Whether it is Costa who returns on a more permanent basis, or another striker in the squad that is brought in, Mourinho will have to look at this problem and find a solution quickly. Our objective is to finish top four.

“I think this season we are a bit unlucky some games, but we have the same good team as past year and that team was champions so I think we have the quality to get out of this situation and we just have to fight every day, every game”. “Again I feel that we don’t have the right to ask the club for players”, said Mourinho.

“We started doing that with bad results but good performances”.

But despite going better in Europe, it’s their repeated failures in the Premier League that are starting to really annoy Chelsea supporters with their players not looking like they know what to do to get themselves out of the mire. But if you analyse matches you can identify a few players where it is hard for them to be consistent. You realise that was an individual moment where the player did better than he is doing. I think people must feel responsibilities. The club is the club, the owner and the board – they are not responsible for the bad moment.

“Time-outs, stopping the game, asking for the medical team to go on, drinks for a minute…They were more than ready for basketball and they did it very well”, he added. “We had the confidence after our last games”. In the first half we were soft and did not press and were not aggressive and were not intense.

“Either they do have faith in him, which is I think is eroding all the time, or they are not sure what to do in terms of a replacement.

We didn’t deserve this result”.

Chelsea in 2013, under interim boss Benitez, won the Europa League after becoming the first reigning European champions to exit the Champions League at the group stage in defence of their title.

“The ref made an important mistake but it’s a part of the game” – Mourinho says of the “clear hand-ball” when Francis handled from Costa’s centre in the box.