Marco Silva, Mauricio Pochettino, Bernd Leno and Andreas Pereira look ahead to Monday's SW6 derby.
Mauricio Pochettino
I think [Brighton] was a really important victory, not only because that victory puts us into the next round of the Carabao Cup, but to build our trust and for our confidence. I think [it was] another solid performance which we translated into a victory, which the players need, the team need and the fans also need. The effort was fantastic from the team. This situation can make us stronger and make us confident for Monday.
Bernd Leno
They are in a transition moment – new manager, a lot of new players. Their striker [Nicolas Jackson] now is banned with a fifth yellow card, and all this stuff. They are under big pressure. And under big pressure a lot of big players perform even better, so we have to be ready for everything. It will be big game, a 50/50 game, and hopefully we can do it like last season, with the atmosphere and all this stuff. That was probably one of the best atmospheres at Craven Cottage, in my opinion, and hopefully we can make the fans happy again in that derby.
Marco Silva
You recognise how important it is when you feel the fans. It’s probably the closest club from our football club, and that makes the derby slightly different, but we have some others in London as well. You feel that the game is important for our fans. We want to be competitive, want to fight for the three points. We are playing at home and we want to make their life really difficult. Last season I had that feeling, how it’s important for our fans, for sure. We gave them a very good week last January when we played against them at the Cottage. After the match, we felt how they were proud of ourselves. This [game] is really special for them. We want to get a good result, we want to make them proud again, and what we can promise is that we are going to give our maximum again for the shirt and to make them proud again.
Andreas Pereira
There is a lot of quality [in Chelsea’s team]. They’re still figuring out how to play, they’ve not played a lot of games together. This is normal, what is happening. But, of course, we know they have a lot of quality, we know we have to respect them. Everyone thinks they’re in a bad situation, but that’s a dangerous place for us to be. They know their qualities as well, so it’s going to be a tough game.
