Marc Cucurella says Chelsea's recent struggles are all down to opponents treating them with more respect than before.
Enzo Maresca's side climbed back to fourth place after a fortunate comeback win against West Ham on Monday. It was just their second victory in eight games but the Chelsea boss hailed his players’ mental strength after falling behind.
And Cucurella reckons they are still getting to grips with teams setting out more defensively than before.
“I think now a lot of teams come here just to defend and play counterattacking football,” he said. “When you have 10 or 11 players behind the ball it’s very difficult but we need to stay in our plan and stay patient, I think (against West Ham) we stayed on our plan and we came back.
“That’s very important because now teams start to respect us and maybe they can not play face to face against us so they have to play a defensive system.”
Chelsea’s priority remains getting back into next season’s Champions League, with Maresca stressing they should not get overly confident about a top-four finish. But they are favourites to win the Europa Conference League and face Brighton in the FA Cup fourth round on Saturday night.
And Cucurella added: “I think we are here to win trophies. This is a big club and our main objective is to win big trophies.
“We are doing well in the process and this is a long season, we need to stay focused and work game by game to be able to achieve our goal.”
The Spain international also backed striker Nicolas Jackson to emerge from his difficult run. Striker Jackson has not scored since mid-December but Cucurella said: “I think for every striker in the world it is important to score goals but with Nicolas it’s not just the goals, he gives a lot to the team.
"He presses very good and does a lot of movement in and out for other players and that is also very good. Everyone has tough moments during the season but the most important thing is that we are with him during this period he plays a lot and for sure if he continues like this he will score a lot of goals.”