Blues ‘fine’ despite recent wobble – Jose

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho insists his team are in good shape despite a couple of disappointing recent performances.

Mourinho was unhappy with the Blues’ display in this month’s defeat at Newcastle – since which Ashley Cole has been left out of the team – and was annoyed by the lacklustre showing against Basel in the Champions League on Tuesday.

But overall he believes his relatively inexperienced squad are heading in the right direction ahead of a packed schedule of matches.

“At this moment our situation is fine if I forget the performance from the last match,” he said.

“We are a close distance to the [league] leaders, have qualified in the Champions League and are in the quarter-finals of the Capital One Cup.

“We have to improve the stability in our game and improve individually, but we are okay.”

And Mourinho is confident the players will recover from the midweek trip to Switzerland in time for Sunday’s clash with in-form Southampton at Stamford Bridge.

He explained: “We slept in Basel after the game and travelled the next morning.

“We worked on Wednesday and they did the recovery and we trained hard with the people who didn’t train the day before.

“Yesterday they had the day off, especially because in this month there is no chance to give them days off again. Then today we trained again and the training was good.

“We still have work to do and hopefully on Sunday we will be ready.”

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