By Paul Green at Hill Dickinson Stadium
XABI Alonso is demanding his Chelsea side build on Saturday’s clean sheet in the 2-0 victory against Everton at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
The Pensioners finally kept an opponent at bay for the first time in 22 top flight games since a similar 2-0 success over Brentford in January.
It was the Bees who once again exposed Chelsea’s defensive frailties last month with a 3-0 win over their London rivals in what was Alonso’s last away trip before the win at the Toffees.
But it was a very different story on Merseyside at the weekend, where Pedro Neto’s second-half brace sealed three points and gave Alonso his and the Blues’ first shutout of the campaign.
The SW6 boss said: “It is just one. It will be key when we’ve managed ten clean sheets. The first one feels good.
“This one feels good and it was needed but now the goal is to be consistent and to keep doing that.”
Alonso added: “It is one day. We need to repeat again and again and again, but for sure the mentality was very good because we knew that it was not about playing nice.
“Sometimes it is not just to play nice, it is to play good and we played good football. We won many duels, many second balls. We knew how to be efficient in different situations.
“That I feel is something that we will take for the future from a lot of things from today’s game.
“We needed one of these [performances] with a clean sheet, with a win.
“After the defeat at Brentford, the feeling was that it was not enough and today it has been better.”
A feisty encounter produced six bookings and also saw Chelsea goalkeeper Emi Martinez stretchered off following an accidental collision with Jarrod Branthwaite in the 75th minute. The Everton defender was able to continue after treatment, but Martinez was stretchered off after the game had been held up for ten minutes.
The Argentine required an operation and it has now been confirmed he has a fractured jaw which could potentially keep him on the sidelines for a couple of months.
But it was Neto’s brace which ultimately proved the difference between the two sides, with Alonso keen to single out not only the goal hero but the contribution of several team-mates.
The manager said: “You can call him [Neto] whatever – winger, wing-back, attacking position, defending, he can do many things. Today he has done well. He is so competitive.
“He is a threat against any other full-back. When he is on the last line of racing in between he connects well with the other players around with Joao [Pedro], with Cole [Palmer], today with Josh [Acheampong] as well – they worked really well.
“I am happy that he can score but I’m going to say today he had Joao, Cole, Morgan [Rogers]. They didn’t score but for me they played a fantastic game.
“They worked really hard, they were helping the team – Morgan on the wing, Cole and Joao in the middle. We made a lot from that to win as a team and there were many positives.”
