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CHELSEA FC: AVRAM: I AM RESPONSIBLE

/noticias.info/ With a full squad available, Avram Grant has been explaining some of his decisions on team selection, and further analysing last week's Carling Cup Final defeat to Tottenham.

In the past week, Grant has soaked up criticism following the extra time defeat, and has now spoken out to set the record straight.

Referring to the Wembley game, he said: 'We didn't play good. Since then, nothing happened. We came to train, trained, the players were disappointed but full of energy to continue. We are the team that came to the final, not the others.

'I am responsible for everything and always look at how I can make things better. We put a very strong team out against Tottenham.

'First if you want to analyse the game, the first 20 minutes they were much better than us, the last 20 we were better. In the second half, before the penalty, not even one chance to Tottenham and our possession was better than them. One mistake and the game changed.

'I think the tactics were the same we played against them in the league. We didn't play good, but it is football. Again, in the second half, I think we could have won the game.'

With a full squad available to him, Grant now has big decisions to make regarding his team selection for every game, and he insists that there is no need to find a set 11 players to stick with.

'Generally I don't believe that the 11 that play need to play all the time. If you play seven games in three weeks with the same eleven, I am sure in the sixth game or the seventh game it will not be the same,' he reasoned.

'The physical pressure is much more than it was before, and the game is much more fast than it was even three years ago. You need to use not just 11 players, more than that. One of our strengths when we lost key players was we had good players on the bench.'

Since the return of many of our players from unavailability, it has been put to Grant that our football has not been as entertaining as he would like. This is one suggestion he was happy to accept, but believes this should not be taken as a surprise.

'I think in the last games we didn't play an entertaining football, but I think it's very difficult when you play very good football and so many players got injured, and you play with others it is not easy to make it consistently entertaining,' he said.

'But I think you saw that until then we played very good and won games. I cannot say our football in the last two or three games was very good but this has happened.'

'We played good football and created a lot of chances, sometimes 10 and scored only one. I agree in the last games we didn't play good, but if you take all five or six months I think we played good, and with players back from injury and players rested after playing so many games I think we will see good football, as before.

'Even after we beat Manchester City (6-0), I told you it will not happen every game. We always need to focus on results but I will not change my way, we need to also focus on the way of results. We need to try always to play good football, but without results I don't believe in this.'

24 wins from 35 games indicate that results have been impressive since the Israeli took charge, and he believes we deserve credit for such success given the changes made earlier in the season.

'I think we have really good fans who know what we did now. I don't like to speak about myself but I think if someone else did what I did you [the press] would treat him differently.

'All the fans were disappointed on Sunday, I am more disappointed for them that we lost than for me. They were before any manager and after any manager in the club. I think most of them respect what we did now.

'We will win trophies in Chelsea that's for sure, but you cannot build things in one day.' notas_de_prensa_archivo