Fulham coach Marco Silva was proud of his team’s efforts to ensure his side secured a point at Stamford Bridge on Friday night.
“A proper derby,” was how he described it. “And a good derby from ourselves.
“From the first minute, they [the Fulham players] understood the plan and they executed it really well as well.”
Our Head Coach spoke of the expectations he had of the game before going into it: “We knew before the match how it would be difficult.
“They’re a team with individual quality and they didn’t play last week with more time to prepare the game, more time to settle the new players as well.
“I said to my players we have to be even better than when we played them at the Cottage when we played them two or three weeks ago and they did it from the first minute.
“The way we tried to play always forward, offensively, our reaction in some moments in the first half when we lost the ball was really, really good and I think we deserved clearly a point.”
It is no secret that Chelsea had a busy transfer window in January, which made it all the more challenging for Marco and his staff to plan ahead of the game.
“It was difficult to predict how many new players were going to play but for us, it is not important who is going to play,” he said. “It was difficult to predict if they were going to start with four, start with three, because it can change.
“They have the capacity to change, even during the game as well. For example, they started the game with four at the back and finished with three.
“Our guys did really well.”