Andreas Christensen opens up on the difficulties of playing for Chelsea: 'You can’t get comfortable here'

Andreas Christensen has promised that he will never get “comfortable” in the Chelsea first team, opening up about the mental pressure involved in playing for Antonio Conte’s side.

The Danish centre-back has been one of the finds of the season for Chelsea, effectively replacing David Luiz and making 19 starts already. But as he explained after Wednesday’s 0-0 draw with Arsenal, it is “mentally hard” to keep performing at the top level for a side trying to win multiple competitions.

Christensen is an established first-teamer now and on Tuesday he was rewarded with a new four and a half year contract, taking him up to June 2022, to recognise his progress. But the 21-year-old knows that he has to maintain his high performance standards, because if he gets sloppy he will lose his place. Not just because Chelsea have senior defenders like Luiz and Gary Cahill, but because they are also interested in upgrading their squad. Conte was interested in signing Virgil van Dijk from Southampton before he joined Liverpool for £75million.

“You can’t get comfortable here,” Christensen said after Chelsea’s 0-0 draw with Arsenal. “Even with the players we have here now you can’t feel comfortable, the players we have in the changing room.” That competition for places, Christensen says, creates an intense pressure to perform. “That is why it is so mentally hard because every time you play you have to perform and you can’t afford to make major mistakes.”

Christensen’s success this season is a vindication of his pathway into the Chelsea first team, which included a two-year loan to Borussia Monchengladbach. In Germany he gained the experience that has allowed him to slot into the first team this year.

“I am happy with the way it has gone,” Christensen said. “It’s not an easy team to break in. The two seasons I had away prepared me. I said to myself that if I wasn’t ready now, I would never be.”

The biggest adjustment Christensen has to make is to playing over the busy Christmas period. At Monchengladbach he would have a two-week Christmas period but here the football never stops. While Conte has cleverly rotated his defenders, Christensen admitted that he is still starting to feel tired, especially mentally, about the high demands of regular first-team performance.

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“There are so many games that we try to rotate a lot,” Christensen said. “That helps a lot but at the same time you want to play as many games as possible. At the end of the games you feel a bit tired but we love to play football and we won’t complain.”

“Personally I’m more tired than normal because playing in Germany you get two weeks off over Christmas so I’m used to that. Coming back here, maybe the most difficult part is mentally. The body is prepared for it from pre-season but mentally it is difficult to keep your concentration well, it is for me anyway. Even in the academy we got a little break over Christmas. It is difficult mentally and you have to keep preparing for each game as it comes with only two or three days in between."