Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri praised his players for the way they have improved lately. Chelsea suffered some embarrassing defeats against Bournemouth, Manchester City and Manchester United. However, the club has shown improvement in recent performances.
Chelsea put in a gritty display against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final and have won their last two Premier League matches against Tottenham and Fulham.
Sarri has said that the Chelsea players are not difficult to manage. He said, “In my opinion no. Of course the situation is not easy because we are Chelsea, we have to win something, but the players are not very difficult to manage. They respected me before. It wasn’t a problem for me, the dressing room. We have some problems with the mentality because we did very bad in two or three matches, not the dressing room.
I was lucky because I have two very good goalkeepers. In the match against Tottenham, [Willy] Caballero did very well, in the match against Fulham, Kepa did very well. I am lucky for this because we have really two very, very good goalkeepers. You can see the situation was well managed, I was lucky I think.”
Sarri also said that he is aiming for Champions League qualification through the Premier League but did is not taking the Europa League lightly. He said, “I think we can gain the spot in the Champions League in the Premier League. We are fighting. We are only two points away [from the top four] at the moment, and have to play one match [in hand]. But the Europa League is a very important competition, the second in Europe, an important trophy with a spot for the Champions League.”
Chelsea play the first leg of their Europa League last 16 tie against Dynamo Kyiv tonight. This will be Chelsea’s third encounter against the Ukrainian club.
