An honest assessment of Chelsea’s first-half performance at Everton from the midfielder…

In common with the rest of this crowded season, there is little time to reflect on the most immediate result before it is straight into the next fixture, with another away trip, a visit to Wolves on Tuesday, following hard on the heels of Saturday night’s 1-0 loss at Everton.Before he and his team-mates turn their full attention to Molineux and the quest to return to winning ways, there is just time for Mason Mount to consider the weekend set-back, and he highlights the way the team began the contest as the root cause for the defeat. The deciding goal came from the penalty spot midway through the first half.‘Everton are a tough team, they make it very hard,’ Mount said.

‘We know we didn’t start well enough, we didn’t start like we have been playing recently and then we got punished. From 1-0 down it is a difficult game, so we have to look at how we started and correct that for the next game.‘These things happen sometimes,’ he added, ‘but we want to be pushing for number one and we can’t start like that. We know that.‘We have to look at where we went wrong and really try to correct it for the next game because the games come thick and fast and it’s another away game so we need to ready for that.’Mount came as close as anyone to salvaging something from our visit to Merseyside when his free-kick from out wide cannoned back off the far post with 10 minutes remaining. Reece James also struck the woodwork shortly after Chelsea went behind.

‘We are always going to create but in this game we didn’t put them away,’ observed Mount, ‘but that is sometimes how it goes and we have to look towards the next game.’