
Chelsea
must keep their feet on the ground and cannot start thinking about winning
the Premier League, says boss Antonio Conte.
Conte's side had to come from behind to beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 at
Stamford Bridge on Saturday night, the Blues' seventh win in a row secured
thanks to quick-fire goals either side of half-time from Pedro and Victor
Moses.
However, despite maintaining their one-point lead at the top of the table
over both Liverpool and Manchester City, who they travel to next Saturday
lunch time, the Italian was quick to dampen down talk of a fifth Premier
League title after the game.
"Today in this period it is not right to talk about winning the league,"
Conte said. "We have to improve and we have a long way ahead. We have to
wait to speak - not to write things - and it is important to stay humble.
"We won a game against a really strong team and on Saturday we have another
really strong team."
What most pleased Conte about his team's display was the character they
showed after falling behind to Christian Eriksen's early strike to inflict a
first league defeat of the season on their London rivals.
"This was a big test as Tottenham is a big team with good organisation and
they started better than us," he said.
"They started with a fantastic goal. I liked a lot our reaction. It wasn't
easy. To react this way, with Pedro's goal, gave us the right confidence.
"After the first half we spoke and we found together the right solution to
win the game. Second half we exploited situations we didn't exploit in the
first half. From tomorrow we have to think about City.
"I always speak with my players after the first half, it's right to see the
right things and the bad things we are doing. Sometimes it can happen that
the opponents can start better than you, especially a team that last season
fought until the end to win the title. We have to continue, but must be
pleased."
Looking ahead to next weekend's trip to the Etihad to take on
third-in-the-table City, Conte is adamant Chelsea are now a much-changed
side to the one who lost back-to-back games against Liverpool and Arsenal in
September.
"We are a different team to the one that faced Liverpool and Arsenal," he
said. "If we were that team that lost to them we would have lost today."
Conte was also eager to play down talk of a touchline dispute with his
opposite number Mauricio Pochettino.
"This game the behaviour was right and fantastic atmosphere," he said. "I
love this football. With Mauricio I have great respect for his work. During
the game we spoke in one moment because he wasn't happy with my assistant,
but it was nothing important.
"I didn't consider making changes for second half. We had to improve as a
team, not as a single player. We had to exploit situations we didn't
exploit."
"I have no concerns with [Thibaut] Courtois' distribution. We are working on
this. It's logical when we are working for four months we are working on
this. We want to play from the back. There are some things we work on during
the training session and I repeat, we can work a lot."