Guus Hiddink: Chelsea will push for a European place
Hiddink conceded Chelsea were slightly lucky
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Your support makes all the difference.Chelsea's interim manager Guus Hiddink is planning a push for European football next season after his team climbed into the top eight, only four points behind sixth-placed West Ham.
Unbeaten in 12 league games, they rode their luck in inflicting another defeat on suffering Norwich City by virtue of a Diego Costa goal that should have been disallowed for offside.
“I haven't seen it yet but, if so, I can understand people are frustrated in the other dressing room,” he said. “If that's the case, I can understand their feelings.”
As to the possibility of making the top six: “First of all, we're happy. It's not Chelsea standard to be happy to be out of the relegation zone, and sit back and relax a bit. We have to set new targets now with the ambition of Chelsea in the direction of Europe.
“We have a tight schedule – Stoke, PSG, Everton – and the squad is not very, very broad, so we hope everyone is on board. If everyone is available, we'd like to go as high as possible towards the European spots.
“We have now won a few games in a row, which gives satisfaction of course. I think we were a bit sloppy in the finishing in the first half. We had a splendid start through Kenedy, a beautiful goal, but after that we had some options to get a second. We did in the end, but we should have killed it off already by then.”
Norwich's Alex Neil was commendably philosophical about the decision to allow Costa's goal to stand.
“It's probably been the story of our last few games,” he said. “When that's a continuous thing, it doesn't boil down to luck. Quality shows and, at times, we missed opportunities we should have taken.
“The second goal is offside. The officials will be disappointed they've not got it right. You'd expect them to. But when you're down the bottom end, these bits go against you.”
A physical contest left Norwich nursing further injuries. Gary O'Neil suffred a gashed head, Robbie Brady lost two teeth and Alex Tettey needed an x-ray on his leg. “I'm not going to sit here saying 'poor us, luck's not on our side,'” Neil added.
“The fact we're in the bottom three now has no bearing. We've been there or about all season. We have to win games to get us out of there.”
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