Chelsea 1-0 Norwich

The victory was also a much needed boost for under-fire manager Jose Mourinho who had overseen three straight league defeats for the first time since owner Roman Abramovich took over the club 12 years ago.

Norwich had chances, too, with Brady’s shot saved by Begovic, but Chelsea held on to ease the pressure on Mourinho, who punched the air in relief when he heard the final whistle.

“You have to recover points from four candidates”, said Mourinho. We could have scored four or five.

Mourinho will undoubtedly take heart from all that ahead of Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League journey to Israel to play Maccabi Tel Aviv, but he will still be concerned by the fact that all of Chelsea’s possession and creativity did not produce the bag full of goals it should have. Eden Hazard may start the game on the bench or be omitted altogether after sitting out one of Belgium’s training sessions earlier this week with a fever and sore throat, but Mourinho has said that Hazard is available to start the game.

“In the first half he misses two chances”.

Mourinho said: “You don’t score goals, you get heavier”.

It was their second win in seven matches.

“I think the fourth position is a hard position but a possible task”. “Yes he can do much better but one goal is very important”.

The hosts came desperately close to a second goal as Kurt Zouma struck the woodwork from a Willian corner, while Pedro fired wide from 20 yards minutes later.

“Obviously we are very sorry with everything that happened during the week, and the stadium and all the professionals gave a fantastic reaction of solidarity with all the victims”. “But, in the last week, if every name connected to us was true we’d have to build another training centre because there are already 126 (players linked)”.

“But one of the teams that go up may also have a little bit of a collapse”. I think we deserve to be enjoying the last three, four minutes with a two, three, 4-0 result, relaxed.

Costa produced the ideal response, however, in the 64th minute when he offered a glimpse of his undoubted quality and conjured the goal Mourinho will hope triggers a resurgence in his form. Despite languishing in 15th place in the standings, Alex Neil’s side do come into their game with Chelsea having beaten Swansea 1-0 thanks to Jonny Howson’s first goal of the season.

“Without playing a phenomenal match we were solid and showed a desire to win”, Mourinho added.