Defensive Solidity Has Been at the Heart of Our Good Recent Form - Morinho Praises Cahil

Following Chelsea's recent slight improvement in form, Morinho during his custom press conference was asked about the England vice-captain’s deal at his pre-match press conference today, Jose Mourinho explained what makes Cahill such an integral cog in the Chelsea defence.

‘He normally plays with such an amazing stability that it’s easy for me to have in my memory a couple of matches where he didn’t play so well,’ said Mourinho. ‘It’s so easy because it is a couple of matches and no more than that.

‘He’s a stable performer and this is what we need. You could see that against Tottenham: a match without a captain, such a difficult match. With a kid like Zouma, and Gary, they were a couple with great stability.

‘The contract is good for him and it’s good for the club,’ continued Mourinho.

‘It was a happy move for him when he joined Chelsea. He likes to be here, and he’s an important player for us. He’s one of our 14 or 15 players that are always involved. He’s English, representing Chelsea at the national team level. Everybody is happy.’

As Mourinho noted, Cahill has contributed to the clean sheet cause in the past couple of weeks. Against Bournemouth tomorrow we will be aiming for a fourth straight shutout, something we haven’t managed since this time last year. The manager is hopeful of carrying on from where we left off at Tottenham.

‘They were good clean sheets, not lucky clean sheets,’ assessed Mourinho.

‘The team performed really well as a team with good communication and a good reading of the game.

‘Against Tottenham the feeling was that we could have been there a couple more hours and we would never have conceded a goal because we were so solid and so in control. We had our chances and our chances were really big chances to win.

‘To play against one of the best teams in the Premier League and perform the way we did was good. We can try to build from the last week with three positive performances, all of them different, all of them demanding different things from us, and if we can get a good result tomorrow it will be four matches in a row which we haven’t done in a long time.’