Blues forward Conor Chaplin felt there were plenty of positives to take from Sunday’s home game against AFC Bournemouth, despite the Cherries netting twice late on to claim a 2-1 win.
The 27-year-old, speaking immediately after the game, admitted it was difficult to see past the disappointment at that moment but was in no doubt that there were positives aspects to the display.
"Maybe now, maybe not right now, but I know for a fact there were plenty of them,” he said. "I thought we were brilliant. I know it's tough to say now, it sounds silly, but we need to, we have to take so much confidence on the way that we played.
"They're a top, top Premier League side. They're a really good team, really good players and I feel like we deserved a lot more from the game.
"So, yeah, it's one that, it's definitely one that there were, and I know there were so, so many positives.
"Outside noise, won't delve into that too much now and probably, rightly so, and probably expect that, but I know for a fact there were so, so many positives in what we've done today.”
Quizzed on what he believes was the difference between seeing the game out and securing the three points and not doing so and what might be done differently in the future, Chaplin reflected: "First, probably a little bit of luck. I think before it even gets to seeing out a game, score again like I felt we could have on the ascendancy, on the counter-attacks, on good moments that we had.
"Going 2-0 up would help a lot and I think that we need to focus on that, definitely. We're not going to be the sort of team that goes 1-0 up and then you're defending that in the Premier League because everyone can score at any given moment, so it's not the way to go about it. But when it gets late, obviously we know that you need to protect that lead.
"Individual things, individual details, second balls, huge importance in games like this and then individual details and moments and mistakes that we can eradicate, for sure, but that's something that we need to keep working on.”
Asked what manager Kieran McKenna says to them after a game like Sunday’s he said: "He's incredibly level-headed, he knows how close we are to winning the game. It's not to say we're hiding from or we're not addressing the parts where we're not happy with because we will and we'll do that in a week.
"The early part of the week, we'll do that because we have to, we have to improve, we have to learn.
"But he also knows that we feel like we're a better team with better chances. There was an incredible amount of positives to come from the game, it's just hard to say and speak about that when the game ends out there.”
Looking ahead to Saturday’s game against Wolves, still 19th having been beaten 2-1 at West Ham last night, Chaplin continued: "We need to go again straight away. There's no time to wait, there's no time to sulk, there's no time to be gutted about this. It's going to hurt, but we need to go again. We need to be ready for the next Saturday.”