Inside Chelsea
“Cahill is a good player, a great player and a great defender,”…“I trust him and he will play tomorrow. – Conte
The Blues boss has refused to pin any blame on his struggling centre-back after he was criticised for a glaring error in the 3-0 defeat to Arsenal.
Antonio Conte has given his backing to Gary Cahill after his mistake led to Alexis Sanchez’s opening goal during Chelsea’s defeat to Arsenal.
The England defender was criticised after his team suffered a 3-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium, with the Blues having conceded two or more goals in each of their last four games.
Conte remains without John Terry for his side’s visit to Hull City on Saturday and insists he will stick with Cahill despite his recent struggles.
“Cahill is a good player, a great player and a great defender,”Conte told the media.“I trust him and he will play tomorrow.
“I think when we lose, we lose together, not [because of] a single mistake. There was a single mistake, but we had 80 minutes to recover the situation.
“In 80 minutes we didn’t recover the situation and, for this reason, I think that a single mistake can happen during the game. I hope he can improve also under this aspect, but I don’t like to say that your mistake or my mistake [cost us the game]. We win or lose together.
“If someone makes this mistake, we must work together with him to solve this situation and against Arsenal we had 80 minutes to repair the mistake.”
Conte believes it is too simplistic to blame the back four alone for Chelsea’s recent failure to keep clean sheets.
“It is important for the manager too find a solution, together with the players,”he added.“When you concede a goal, it is not a problem only for the defenders, but for the whole team.
“The whole team defends and the whole team attacks. The whole team must be more compact and we are working a lot to find a solution because when Chelsea play, usually we score.
“The [defensive issue] is the big one and we are working to solve this problem we are also looking to improve the attacking situations, to win the ball when you lose the ball, to stay compact.
“We are working on many principles, but it is not easy when you are working with a new team to transfer new ideas. We are improving, slowly, but we are improving.”
