As Chelsea beat Stoke City yesterday for their 13th win in a row, they equalled Arsenal’s single season record for consecutive wins and next time out against Tottenham away, the Blues will attempt to equal the all-time 14 game winning streak which the Gunners set across 2 seasons between February and August of 2002. As ESPNFC reported Gary Cahill has insisted that everyone at the club is totally focused on points which will win them the title rather than a record which is nice but wins them no trophy. Speaking to Chelsea TV with the Tottenham game very much the next thing on their agenda, Cahill had this to say:
“We’re on a terrific run, but we realise it’s a game everyone’s going to be speaking about,”.
“It’s not because it’s Tottenham that’s going to change in our preparation, the way we go about things.
“It’s going to be exactly the same and we expect exactly the same from each and every player come kick-off time and we’ll be okay.”
“It’s not been something we’ve spoken about,” Cahill added. “It’s not like all week we’ve been saying ‘we want this record, we want this record.’ We’ve just kept going. And I think that’s the right mentality to have.
“We just have to keep focused on the job that we’re doing. We’re getting this run and we’re getting this success through hard work and through everyone chipping in with their part in the game. That’s the mentality we should have. That shouldn’t change.”
So clearly teams want the 3 points when they face Chelsea and an added bonus would be ending their winning streak but Tottenham and many of their players have said that they realise if they still have any hopes of winning the title then they must beat the Blues on Wednesday if they want to gain any ground on them in what is essentially a 6 pointer. The way things have been going for Chelsea has been virtually perfect over their streak as they have not really had any lucky wins where they were outplayed and only just grabbed the winner. There have been close matches but Chelsea have been worthy winners of every one of their 13 wins in a row and given the way Antonio Conte has the team playing it is hard to see them losing at the moment which is something Tottenham must be acutely aware of.