Feedback – Slavia Prague 0 – 1 Chelsea

"In the past, when we were in trouble, we immediately conceded a goal and we are now able to stay in trouble to fight."

Maurizio Sarri was delighted with the "suffering" of his Chelsea players in their victory over Slavia Prague.

Chelsea produced a sub-par result in the first leg of the Europa League quarter-final, but showed a good character to find a defeated winner by Marcos Alonso.

That means they'll be coming back to Stamford Bridge for the return match next week with a limited advantage and Sarri thought it was the kind of match they'd have lost earlier in the season.

"I'm really happy with the result and the performance," said Sarri, "we can suffer at this time and in the past, we could not suffer in the difficult moments of a match.

"In the past, when we were in trouble, we immediately conceded a goal and we are now able to stay in trouble to fight and suffer without conceding anything."

"We knew very well that it was very difficult to play here, the opponents are very physical, very aggressive, so we knew that we had to face difficulties during the match and we were able to face them well. play better.

"We must now think that the return leg will be difficult, and these opponents are also very dangerous, as against Genk. [where they won 4-1]. We must be careful. "

The boss of Chelsea made seven changes before his Super Sunday Liverpool, live on Sky Sports, and he admitted that in an ideal world, Eden Hazard would have remained on the bench, without needing 58 minutes late.

"At the beginning of the match, I wanted him on the bench, because I thought the match would be very difficult and that I would probably need to use it," added Sarri.

"But if we were 1-0 late in the first period, I would not have used it."