In the first half of our 3-0 win against Leicester City, Chelsea clearly felt the absence of striker Diego Costa as Eden Hazard took charge of our centre forward duties in place of our field general. Nevertheless, the Blues completely dismantled the Foxes at the King Power Stadium aided by two goals from left wing back Marcos Alonso, and improving their efforts upfront significantly in the second half of the match.
For goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, our latest Premier League victory showed that Chelsea can do well even when missing Diego.
"Yes of course. We have the quality to replace Diego. He is important for us, but if he is not there for one game, we know that we can handle it. There is obviously a different way of playing because against [Robert] Huth and [Wes] Morgan there is no point in giving long balls to Eden, Willian and Pedro. But I think we did well and the early goal helped us to control the game and early moments."
"[Marcos Alonso] and Victor [Moses] had a lot of time in the box at the second post. It is good that they feel the moment to go and score goals. It is very good for us."
The win over Leicester was also important to get Chelsea back on the winning track in the league after the 2-0 defeat to Tottenham at White Hart Lane ended our 13-game winning streak. For Courtois, the result and the underlying performance highlighted the squad’s resilience and mentality.
"Just to see that we won 3-0, it shows that we don't stop and the loss [against Tottenham] didn't effect us. Everybody hoped we'd drop points, so that was very good. The most important thing is we go to Anfield with the biggest gap possible."
"[Last Saturday] was a game that, if I was sitting at home [like our rivals], I'd be thinking they're playing Leicester away and could drop points. For us to win here was a big boost and now we want to do the same against Hull so we have the gap at Anfield and there everything can happen."
The three points taken at the King Power Stadium coupled with the results from the rest of the top six mean that Chelsea have increased the lead to seven points at the top of the league. The situation puts all the pressure back on our rivals to close the gap.
"Hopefully we can win another 13 times in a row, but we will see. We have to go game by game and that's best for us. Obviously if you're at the top, you have the pressure of wanting to keep that gap. Thankfully for us we are there, we are seven point clear."
"The pressure is more on the other teams than us, but obviously we have to keep winning our games. Obviously we are in a good moment, things are going well. Last year we were having a rough time and it was harder to get things in our favour. So we will try to keep the momentum and just win our games."
-Thibaut Courtois; Source: Goal.com
With 52 points In only 21 Premier League games, Chelsea have already surpassed last season's total points tally of 50 — an average of 2.48 points per game. Chelsea simply need to continue to steadily harvesting as many points as possible.