Antonio Conte was quick to douse title talk in the wake of Chelsea’s 5-0 roasting of Everton.
The Blues looked every inch contenders after hitting five past the Toffees without reply, thanks to Eden Hazard’s double, a first for the club for Marcos Alonso and one each for Diego Costa and Pedro
In truth, the winning margin might have been more than twice that against the Merseysiders who had conceded just eight all season before today.
While labelling his team’s showing ‘Fantastica’ Conte played down the fact his team are now table-toppers.
He wasn’t interested either on the impact of the result on his title rivals, suggesting the in-house messages for his own players were more important.
“If you look at the table tonight you can see we are top of the table,” he said. "Tomorrow can probably change the situation, but that too is not important.
“Today it was important to win and to continue to improve and after five games without conceding a goal we can be satisfied.
“We don’t want to send a message to the other teams.
“Now it is more important to send a message to ourselves because it is important to be focused on our own work.”
That said, Conte made clear while clocking up another three points was essential, it is also built into his own DNA for his teams to play with something off a swagger.
He added; “It is important to win, but when you win this way and playing good football with good intensity with the ball and without the ball I think it is great.”
“This can give us confidence, so I am happy tonight."
