Sunday 27 November 2016 09:34, UK
Chelsea must keep their feet on the ground and cannot start thinking about winning the Premier League, says boss Antonio Conte.
Conte's side had to come from behind to beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 at Stamford Bridge on Saturday night, the Blues' seventh win in a row secured thanks to quick-fire goals either side of half-time from Pedro and Victor Moses.
However, despite maintaining their one-point lead at the top of the table over both Liverpool and Manchester City, who they travel to next Saturday lunch time, the Italian was quick to dampen down talk of a fifth Premier League title after the game.
"Today in this period it is not right to talk about winning the league," Conte said. "We have to improve and we have a long way ahead. We have to wait to speak - not to write things - and it is important to stay humble.
"We won a game against a really strong team and on Saturday we have another really strong team."
What most pleased Conte about his team's display was the character they showed after falling behind to Christian Eriksen's early strike to inflict a first league defeat of the season on their London rivals.
"This was a big test as Tottenham is a big team with good organisation and they started better than us," he said.
"They started with a fantastic goal. I liked a lot our reaction. It wasn't easy. To react this way, with Pedro's goal, gave us the right confidence.
"After the first half we spoke and we found together the right solution to win the game. Second half we exploited situations we didn't exploit in the first half. From tomorrow we have to think about City.
"I always speak with my players after the first half, it's right to see the right things and the bad things we are doing. Sometimes it can happen that the opponents can start better than you, especially a team that last season fought until the end to win the title. We have to continue, but must be pleased."
Looking ahead to next weekend's trip to the Etihad to take on third-in-the-table City, Conte is adamant Chelsea are now a much-changed side to the one who lost back-to-back games against Liverpool and Arsenal in September.
"We are a different team to the one that faced Liverpool and Arsenal," he said. "If we were that team that lost to them we would have lost today."
Conte was also eager to play down talk of a touchline dispute with his opposite number Mauricio Pochettino.
"This game the behaviour was right and fantastic atmosphere," he said. "I love this football. With Mauricio I have great respect for his work. During the game we spoke in one moment because he wasn't happy with my assistant, but it was nothing important.
"I didn't consider making changes for second half. We had to improve as a team, not as a single player. We had to exploit situations we didn't exploit."
"I have no concerns with [Thibaut] Courtois' distribution. We are working on this. It's logical when we are working for four months we are working on this. We want to play from the back. There are some things we work on during the training session and I repeat, we can work a lot."
