Ancelotti pleased with strong start

Carlo Ancelotti
12 April 2012

Chelsea coach Carlo Ancelotti was satisfied with his team's 4-1 victory over Group F minnows MSK Zilina as the English champions began their Champions League campaign in comfort.

Michael Essien put the Blues in front in the 13th minute and Nicolas Anelka struck twice in five minutes (24, 28) to put the Blues in control at half-time. Daniel Sturridge added a fourth three minutes after the re-start before Tomas Oravec scored a consolation goal in the 55th minute.

"If I have to judge the performance I am very happy because it's not easy to win 4-1 away in the Champions League," said Ancelotti.

The Italian continued: "Every game in the Champions League is hard to play. We started very well in the first half, we played fantastic football, the second half was different.

"Zilina put more pressure on our defence. The back four did a good match. When you are 3-0 up it's normal to have more difficulty.

"The key was Anelka, he played a fantastic game. He created space, he had opportunities, he was the key for this game. He can play the position in front, sometimes we use him more wide, sometimes he plays in the middle but he shows the same skills if he plays wide.

"I think that Petr could do better with the goal we conceded but we faced a lot of crosses. We had to put more pressure on the wide side. Defensively the back four had a good game.

"I hope to watch my team play a fantastic game for 90 minutes. Obviously I was a player so I know sometimes there are difficult times, the opponent can come back in the game."

Chelsea have now scored 21 goals so far this season and conceded just two in all competitions but Ancelotti insists they are not looking to beat their 142-goal tally of last season.

"Our aim is to play good football, to win the game," he added. "We are not interested in beating the score from last year because it's our record, maybe we are not able to improve on our record."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in