Zouma Thought It Would Be Easier  (Sky Sports)

Kurt Zouma has admitted Chelsea thought defending their Premier League title was going to be easier.

The Blues face Arsenal as part of Super Sunday, but go into the match at the Emirates in 14th place, 19 points behind their next opponents.

Jose Mourinho led Chelsea to the title last season with three games to spare but was sacked in December after a run of nine defeats in 16 games this campaign.

"When you are champions, the season after is always difficult as you think everything comes easy," Zouma said in The Sun. "I think that was our problem. We thought everything was going to be easy and we played like that - but nothing in the Premier League is easy.

"Every game is hard to win, all the teams are very good and everyone can beat everybody. Now, mentally we are more prepared. We're in 2016 and we want to win something this season."

Interim boss Guus Hiddink has acknowledged Chelsea are closer to the relegation zone than the Champions League places but Zouma is looking past that and instead wants the team to challenge for silverware this season.

"It could be dangerous but we have to believe in ourselves. If we start winning matches we can grow a bit as the league is very tight," Zouma said. "We hope we can win the Champions League and have the squad for that. We have a big squad, big players and we have to believe in our chance and say, 'Why not?'

"We are not good in the table but it is not a disaster. Chelsea should be first or second but some years are difficult."

Zouma said the Chelsea squad is united and pointed to Diego Costa as the dressing room joker, playing down the training ground incident between him and Oscar earlier this month.

He said: "This guy is always happy. In training he is always screaming. He doesn't speak English so you can't understand him.

"We are angry about not winning matches. In training we put a lot of intensity into it because the way you train is the way you play.

"Inside the squad everything is good. We didn't have the results we wanted but everyone is together, we speak together and joke as we cannot scream at one person or another person as we cannot create problems. We are all together.