Eden Hazard: West Brom draw a point gained

Eden Hazard has claimed Chelsea’s result at West Bromwich Albion on Tuesday should be viewed positively.

Victor Anichebe’s late header gave relegation-threatened Baggies a 1-1 draw that many observers suggested they merited, with Chelsea’s in-form Belgium midfielder recognising that his side’s failure to win wasn’t all that bad.

“It’s still a point, even if many people are disappointed,” Hazard said to Chelsea’s official website. “I think this is a point that will count. There were some good things but others less so.

“You cannot win every game and it was important we didn’t lose. We’ll improve in the future and we will try to win the next game. We’ll see what happens when the other teams play.”

Hazard claimed West Brom’s eagerness to contain Chelsea made it tough for Jose Mourinho’s men to express themselves at the Hawthorns, comapring their approach to the defensive game plan successfully deployed by Sam Allardyce and West Ham in a 0-0 at Stamford Bridge last month.

“It was a puzzling game. At 1-0, I thought we were managing the match well but we couldn’t get the second goal which would have given us protection and then the game became difficult,” Hazard said.

“I tried to play, we tried to play, but it was a very difficult game.  It was a complicated whenever I had the ball because there were two or three opponents there. We could have got one or two more goals if we had been a little smarter with our final passes.

“They had a plan to defend, as was the case when we played West Ham. It was a similar situation except at the end West Brom pushed a lot, their crowd got behind them and it became complicated.”

Meanwhile, Chelsea new-boy Nemanja Matic says his side are eager to put themselves in a position to challenge for the Premier League title.

“We have a young team and we are not favourites, but if we have a chance to be champions we want to take it,” he stated. “We always believe, we just try to improve and give our best.

“We’ll fight until the end of the season. We need to take it game by game and play as well as we can in order to win matches. At the end of the season we’ll see if we can be champions.”