Cech: Pleasing Reaction

Petr Cech refused to call Sunday's result at Manchester United 'unfair', but is taking the positives from a highly competitive afternoon. We had at least as many goalscoring opportunities as our hosts at Old Trafford, yet went in three goals behind at half-time after Chris Smalling, Nani and Wayne Rooney had beaten the Chelsea goalkeeper and his team-mates passed up opportunities at the other end, but Cech feels we can take consolation from the second half.

'You can never say it is fair or not, but they scored three goals and we scored one. The reflection of the day is there,' said the 29-year-old. 'They were efficient in terms of scoring goals and that's why they won, [but] we can be pleased with our reaction in the second half.' It was a second period in which Fernando Torres scored once and should have had at least one more, while Branislav Ivanovic also went close twice from headers.

'Three-nil down is never easy, but we came back, scored a goal and created chances and 3-2 would have been an exciting end of the game but it tells a story that we didn't take our chances,' Cech lamented. It leaves us five points behind United five games into the Barclays Premier League season, but the Czech international believes it is no problem most of the focus is on the Manchester clubs, United and City. 'We don't care what people are into,' he said. 'We do our job, try to do our best and we will continue doing that.

'Even though we lost today there is a long way to go. City dropped some points [at Fulham] and you can see the league will be difficult for everybody. We are positive that although we lost we can build on it.' We entertain our west London neighbours Fulham at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night in the Carling Cup, before returning to league duties at home to Swansea on Saturday. We will be expected to return to winning ways against Brendan Rodgers' newly-promoted side, and no doubt manager Andre Villas-Boas will be pressing that point home in the coming days.