Enzo Maresca called for a reaction from his squad after twice leaving Brighton empty-handed recently and his players delivered just that on Saturday night with their performance at Villa Park. However, a last-gasp winner meant our trip to Aston Villa ultimately ended in a 2-1 loss and it is why Chelsea's head coach described the result as the toughest defeat of the season to take.
The Blues were pegged back in the Midlands courtesy of two Marco Asensio goals, the latter - and the ultimate winner - game just minutes from full-time, after Enzo Fernandez had earlier given us the lead.
While Chelsea dominated the game in large spells, especially in the first half, a lack of a clinical touch after the break left us wondering what might have been as Unai Emery's side came roaring back to grab all three points in the final stages of the game.
Maresca felt that Villa's ruthless streak in the box is what ultimately settled the tie and why he feels that this defeat is a hard one to take.
‘For me personally, this is the toughest defeat of the season,' our head coach explained when reflecting post-match.
'That is because the reaction from Brighton has been brilliant, the performance was really good today but unfortunately in this moment, it was not enough. This is the reason why it is a tough one.
‘I don’t think we deserved to lose the game to be honest but in this league, you have to be clinical. The difference most of the time is inside the box. Unfortunately, at 1-0 up, we had some chances that we didn’t score and then the same at 1-1. In the end, anything can happen and unfortunately we lost the game.
‘This is a moment where we are unfortunately in a bad run in terms of results but we are still there. Today's performance compared to the performance at Brighton was much, much, much better.'
The head coach believes more performances like today's will help us get out of this tough run...
‘We have 12 games to go - and again, my feeling is that winning one, we go again,' added Enzo.
‘If you remember; the first four or five away games at the start of the season, we won all of them and our best moments were away [from home]. It is football. The most important thing is to judge the performance.
‘The reason why I said before that it is the toughest defeat of the season is because today, again, our team was there. You can recognise: off the ball, aggressive, on the ball, we tried to play and create chances.
‘Without a No.9 in the last two games, we struggled to create chances. Today, we tried Pedro [Neto] during the week, it worked very well, attacking in behind and creating chances, scored a goal but in this moment, we probably are a bit unlucky. We need a win and try to go again.’
Trevoh Chalabah was withdrawn inside the opening 10 minutes of the game with an injury and Maresca updated on the defender in his post-match press conference...
'I'm not sure at the moment with Trev,' added the head coach. 'We will see. It is early so we will see tomorrow. It looks quite good now but I don’t know.’
Maresca praised the noise from the away end at Villa Park and hopes for more of the same at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday...
'The fans were brilliant in that corner and we are sorry that we couldn't get the result.
'It's disappointing when you are winning and then the opponents come back, but the fans were fantastic and I hope we have the same on Tuesday for a big game at Stamford Bridge. Hopefully we can get the three points and celebrate together.'