Chelsea
manager Jose Mourinho said his side fully deserved their 1-0 victory over
Norwich City at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.
Chelsea won for the first time in four Premier League games thanks to Diego
Costa's second-half strike.
However, despite dominating for most of the match, Chelsea were unable to
add to their tally, making it a nervous finale for Mourinho in the home
dugout.
"I think we did well enough not to have the last four minutes under
pressure," said Mourinho, who was back on the touchline after being
suspended for Chelsea's 1-0 loss at Stoke City last time out.
"In the first half we should be winning, in the second half we should score
before the goal and we should score after the goal. The chance we missed in
the last minute of the first half was incredible. We hit the post
immediately after the 1-0 to kill the game.
"And then because we are in a fragile situation, we think that everything
goes against us. We are never lucky and you put Chelsea in a position where
in the last four minutes the team that rarely crossed the halfway line, they
have a throw in, a corner, a rebound, and we could lose two points, which
would again be very undeserved."
Mourinho praised his side's solidity as they kept a first clean sheet in six
games, but was also keen to point out they had been playing well of late,
without having the results to show for their performances.
"Without playing a phenomenal match we were solid and showed a desire to
win," Mourinho added. "And we won, which obviously in this moment is very
important.
"The performances are together, obviously people who are involved in the
game know what it is like to play with huge doses of confidence, or huge
doses of bad and strange feelings. And this makes a huge difference.
"But despite this the team is playing well, they played well in the last
match, Dynamo Kiev, Stoke, today, we deserved better results. Today I think
I did not again deserve my heartbeat to be so high in the last four minutes.
I deserved to be there enjoying a two or three-nil victory.
"But this is what we have, I think they fought hard, played well and were
compact, they felt the responsibility to win, but coped well with that
against a team that is not easy to play against because they defend well and
were well organised.
"They put 10 players behind the ball and in the last minutes, with nothing
to lose, they go to try their luck and to put us under pressure."
And the Chelsea boss also highlighted the contribution of match-winner
Costa, whose 64th-minute strike ended a barren recent run of six games
without a goal.
"Confidence comes with results and goals," Mourinho said. "Can you imagine
after the miss Diego had in the first half if he had missed his chance in
the second half? That would have been three big chances in the game, and can
you imagine if he had missed all three?
"Obviously confidence goes down, but he finally scored and it is a good
feeling for the team because as I said, this is what they deserved because
of the way they worked."
top