Carlo Ancelotti suffered his first defeat at the hands of Manchester United today but insists there are positives to come from the Community Shield clash.

It was the final game of our pre-season campaign, which has seen four consecutive loses, but the point of pre-season is to retrieve your players' fitness and that's why Ancelotti saw a silver lining on Chelsea's cloud.

'I am not worried,' explained the Italian. 'We have improved, we may have to improve more and we have to have more time in possession.

'We played too slowly at the start and we didn't have the possibility of finding our play in the first half, so for this reason we have to work.

'They played better than us and they deserved to win, we knew Manchester could play a good game. They did that and they deserved it.

'But importantly now our players are very close to being fit.

'This was [Michael] Essien's first game of 90 minutes for eight months and [Frank] Lampard and [John] Terry played 90 minutes each.

'They need more time, which is why it is good for them to play a national game this week.

'They could play 70 minutes without a problem. Naturally they have to improve still but within one or two weeks they will be fully fit.'

It was always going to be a tough pre-season, as many of the players didn't return to training until 26 July, after representing their countries in the World Cup.

'It was not a good pre-season,' added Ancelotti, 'we need the players who came back on 26 July to have more time to train.

'We knew it was a difficult pre-season but we are disappointed, we don't want to lose these games.'

However, Ancelotti did have a bit of good news ahead of the first game of our Barclays Premier League season next weekend.

'[Petr] Cech will be fit for West Brom, and so will Alex, they will come back to training next week.

'It's only [Jose] Bosingwa who needs more time, maybe two or three weeks and [Didier] Drogba came back on 26th, he needs another two weeks to be fully fit, he can still play.

'Now we must look forward to the Champions League and being top of the League,' added our manager.