Chelsea midfielder Nemanja Matic insists his struggling team is together and believes the Premier League table is unrealistic.
Last season’s champion suffered its seventh loss in 12 league games with a 1-0 defeat at Stoke City on Saturday.
Jose Mourinho’s team is languishing in 16th in the table, just three points clear of the relegation zone.
But Matic believes Chelsea has been unfortunate in recent matches and said the squad was staying strong.
“I think in the last two games we played good football, but have been unlucky,” the Serbian said. “I don’t want to say that we have played well in all games this season. Of course, there were some where we deserved to lose. But [against Stoke] I think this was not the case and we deserved more. What is going well is that the team is together, everyone understands the situation we are in and we will try to be more together and work hard to make this situation better.
“In this moment, we haven’t had the luck to change something to make it better for us, but I hope in the future we will.”
Chelsea had its chances against Stoke, but Marko Arnautovic‘s 53rd-minute goal proved to be the match-winner.
Matic feels 16th place in the table is harsh on Chelsea.
“We are not used to being in this position,” he said. “But we don’t look at the table because last year, even when we were champions, we didn’t look at the table for the first 10 or 15 games.
“The table is not realistic now, because I think Chelsea deserve more and we will try to recover points which we lost a lot until now. So I hope that we can do that.”
