English Premier League (EPL) defending champions Chelsea on Saturday gained a single point in the league table after a goalless draw against Everton away in the 19th round.
Both teams failed to score throughout the 90-minute game held at Goodison Park. After this away draw, Chelsea holds the third position in the EPL table with 39 points, two points behind second-placed Manchester United. Everton remain in ninth place with 26 points.
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Speaking after the match, Chelsea manager Antonio Conte said that though he was pleased with the overall performance of his side, the team should have been more clinical.
“I think when you play this type of game (we shot 26 times with eight on target), you deserve to win,” said Conte, adding, “We hit the bar and the defender [Phil Jagielka] saved on the goal-line so we are disappointed because we deserved to win and take the three points. We have to take the points against a team who, after the top six, I consider the best team in the league.”
“We played away, against a good team, with great intensity and concentration and the defenders played very well. It’s a pity, but at the same time it was a really good performance and another clean sheet, but if you want to win this game you must score, be more clinical and take your chances,” Conte was quoted by the official website of Chelsea.
Meanwhile, Chelsea’s goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who registered his 50th clean sheet for Chelsea at Everton, too, said that his side deserved to win.
“Coming here to Everton is always a tough game. I think they always give something more against the big teams, they had a good run the last five games so we came here and we knew we had a tough game. They had eight or nine players in their box. We tried to move the ball and tried to find space because with the quality of Willian and Pedro and Eden, we tried to have the gaps to shoot. The only thing we could maybe have done more is more shots on target, try to shoot from distance rather than always a cross because we did not have the big guy up front in this game,” Courtois was quoted by www.chelseafc.com.
“When we lost against West Ham we did not have a good game. We started a bit slow and were not as strong as they were, and they won that game. Maybe against Everton if you were losing 1-0 early, maybe you could have the same difficult game so we were very concentrated in the beginning, trying all the game to keep the clean sheet which was a good thing about today, and we tried to score but we couldn’t.”