Benoit Badiashile insists Chelsea’s players will not start thinking about winning the title until the end of the season.
Chelsea have been this season’s surprise package and are now the closest challengers to Premier League leaders Liverpool in the title race. It has echoes of Leicester City in 2015/16 when Claudio Ranieri’s men were far bigger underdogs but everyone expected them to trip up at some stage - until they actually won it.
Chelsea have winning experience but few expected boss Enzo Maresca to make such an impact so quickly after taking charge at Stamford Bridge last summer. Blues defender Badiashile was still playing down their chances after the club’s win at Tottenham on Sunday which saw them move ahead of Arsenal and turn up the pressure on Liverpool.
Badiashile said: “It is too early to speak about this. We take it game after game. Leicester, I don’t know. We said at the end of the season but now, I cannot say we can win the title.
“I did not know the expectations at the beginning of the season. But when you are Chelsea you like to get at the top.” Maresca has done a remarkable job of turning a big, bloated squad into a consistent winning unit although their resources will be stretched this week with a marathon trip to Kazakhstan to play FC Astana in the Europa Conference League.
But it is clear that despite some tough decisions, the players have full respect for the manager and Maresca’s methods together with a team spirit. Chelsea’s consistency will have only been strengthened by their thumping 4-3 win at Tottenham on Sunday.
Badiashile added: “We try to respect what the coach is asking us to do and at the moment, it is easy to score and play well so we are happy. The gaffer has tried to give us a good spirit. We try to improve day by day and at the moment we are good.
“To be able to achieve things you have to know each other. We try every training session to get to know each other better.”
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