Gary
Cahill feels Chelsea have developed a mental strength as they continue their
unbeaten start to the current campaign.
The 28-year-old defender was part of a Blues side which has kept clean
sheets in their past three games, a 2-0 Premier League win over West Brom, a
5-0 Champions League success over Schalke and Saturday’s 0-0 draw at
Sunderland.
While Chelsea were unable to break down the Black Cats they remain the
top-flight pace setters and Cahill feels the stalemate was a signal of their
newly-found resilience.
"I think we are a different side to last year, not just personnel, but
mentally I think we are different,” he said.
"They made it a scrap, but we matched that and managed to play our football
as well. When teams sit back and get back in that shape, it's very tough. We
saw that last year and this was no different.
"But in these sorts of games, if you don't get the breakthrough, it's
important we don't lose the game, and it's a point away from home."
Chelsea are unbeaten in 20 games from the start of the season but this was
the first match of the campaign in which they have failed to score.
But Cahill was pleased with another clean sheet and a point from what proved
to be just as tough an assignment as he had expected prior to the game.
"It was a game in which we needed to defend well,” he said. “They defended
well as well. It was exactly what we expected, it was a scrap of a game.
"They made it tough by, when we had possession, sitting back very deep, but
they worked very hard, so credit to them, and they looked dangerous when
they tried to hit us on the break, so we had to be on our toes and defend
well.
"Unfortunately for us, we didn't manage to break through. If we had broken
through, it's all of a sudden a different game because like we have seen
before, they have to come out then and try to get the equaliser and it
allows us to play a bit more.
"But credit to them, they did well and defended as a unit."
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