There was a slight feeling of frustration for Chelsea at Selhurst Park, after Cole Palmer's fine opening goal inside the first 15 minutes was cancelled out by a late equaliser from Crystal Palace striker Jean-Philippe Mateta.

We had controlled large spells of the Premier League fixture and had the better of the chances over the 90 minutes, but had to be content with just the one point at the final whistle, despite leading for more than an hour, and Maresca felt the performance was deserving of more.

'Probably we did enough to win the game today,' said our head coach after the match. 'Between the first half and the second half I think we created enough chances to win the game, but going forward you need to be clinical, otherwise the game is always open, especially in this stadium.

'Any transition, any corner, brought energy for them. Unfortunately at the end we conceded but overall today I think we did enough to win.'

The Italian also insisted he is more focused on the team's performance than what the latest result means for the league table, and it is that need to be more ruthless and kill teams off to avoid any late jeopardy which is on his mind at the moment.

'For me it’s not about the table, it’s just about seeing how we can improve things and today for me the performance was very good, on the ball and off the ball. But this moment of the season is going to happen for any team in any season, that you have some moment when you are not able to win games.

'Every game is different, sometimes it is for one reason, other times a different reason. Today if I have to decide the reason why we didn’t win the game, I think it is just about trying to be clinical when you have the chance to kill the game, because at 2-0 the game is probably finished.

'If you continue to be open at the end, you are going to concede some transitions, some corners, and then you can concede a goal.'

However, he knows tricky spells like this can happen in football, and all the Blues can do is keep working and keep improving as we move forward.

'First of all I’ve always said the most important thing is to create chances, because if you create chances that means you are doing the right things. Then you need to take those chances.

'In the Ipswich game, we had so many chances. Sometimes that’s football. Sometimes you create one chance and score one, sometimes you need to create 10 chances to score two.

'The only thing we can do is try to be even more intense during the week when we prepare for the game, even if the intensity of the players is already top, but for sure it is something that we need to improve, remembering that we are one of the best teams for scoring goals at this moment.'