Chelsea take over at the top by beating ‘Boro

But the manager of the team Antonio Conte & their players can not take the boro team easy as there is very little room for the error in the Premier league.

Middlesbrough earlier in the season held Arsenal and Manchester City for draws, but just as belief in their chances of upset were growing, Costa took full advantage of some poor defending to open the scoring on 41 minutes. “For me, that counts more than titles”.

No matches in Europe, an extremely talented manager, a mean defence and an attack capable of unlocking any team – Chelsea are looking more and more like the favourites for the title with every passing game in the Premier League. Now despite having only three at the back, the squad has yet to concede a goal, and that had Diego Costa and company on the verge of claiming top spot in the table.

“If you have the possibility to kill the game, it’s important to kill the game”. I guess (it is because we faced) a strong team with good organisation.

Conte’s decision to revert back to his preferred three-man defense has worked wonders, with The Blues now winning six consecutive Premier League games and keeping six clean sheets in the process. I just want to keep on enjoying my form. I think everybody understood about this philosophy – that’s why we are doing well.

“We showed a lot of character today”.

Liverpool and Manchester City have 27 points each, with Arsenal in fourth with 25.

“You can’t be pleased when you’ve lost a game but I’m very pleased with the attitude of my players”, he said. They’re also averaging 21.8 tackles and 17.2 important interceptions since reverting to 3-4-3 – which is considerably higher than last season and the first six matches.

Karanka said: “It’s normal that everybody is excited when he has the ball, but he has the ball three or four minutes in one game and the rest of the game is 87 minutes, so we have to be careful”.

That proved hugely frustrating for a man who is being touted as a candidate to make the step up to the full England squad this season, and he headed home intent on identifying anything he might have done differently.

Conte sees the unanticipated achievement as a reward for the players’ hard work, but he remains cognizant of the team’s situation and the overall quality in the Premier League.