Thiago Silva is getting accustomed to some new players around him at Chelsea, and the Brazilian knows from experience that fresh faces as well as defensive units understandably take time to settle.
The Blues have added centre-backs Kalidou Koulibaly and Wesley Fofana to our ranks following the summer departures of Toni Rudiger and Antonio Christensen. Marc Cucurella arrived from Brighton as an extra left-sided option, and defensive midfielder Denis Zakaria joined on deadline day.
It all means Thiago Silva has new team-mates either side and in front of him, and, if Fofana makes his debut against West Ham today, there is a chance the back three of him, Thiago and Koulibaly will join forces for the first time.
‘Last season we had the team that was playing together for two years, and you could see the automatic connection between players,’ noted the Brazilian.
‘We need a little time with these players who arrived. We don’t have habits yet, but when you play with top-class players, it’s much easier to work out connections.
‘The players who came are very interesting, and the only thing we need to start winning is to find those automatic connections.
‘I know that we need to work in defence,’ added Thiago, who turns 38 later this month.
‘We lost two players: Rudiger and Christensen. There are many new players so as I said before: we need to find automatism, we must work together. We need to find it quickly, because we have players with big quality.
‘We need to find cooperation outside the field also, because in the field we have quality. That’s the thing about automatism. We have to work defensively to avoid conceding goals.’
That work starts today when we host West Ham seeking a first clean sheet since the opening day of the season.
Thiago Silva is confident we will shore up our defence sooner rather than later with the squad now settled for the season.
‘Fofana and Koulibaly are important players with a high level,’ he stressed.
‘They can add a lot of stability in our defence, because we didn’t start good, we lost many goals. They can help us.
‘We’ve never played together before, and maybe today will be the first time, I don’t know. But when you play with players of a top level, it’s easier to find cooperation and good results.’