The Blues continued our Premier League Cup progress into the semi-finals with a 3-2 victory away at Leeds United on Saturday afternoon, but it wasn't the straightforward win it looked like it could have been when we pulled out a comfortable two-goal lead in the first half.

With that in mind, Chelsea Under-21s head coach Mark Robinson underlined why he needs to analyse every game with the same critical eye, whatever the end result.

‘We are into the semi-finals which is great, but it’s always important when you win games that you still reflect back on it properly, because otherwise the next defeat is around the corner, rather than continually winning,' he explained.

‘In a game when I think we should have comfortably gone through, we ended up making quite hard work of it. So it’s great we got through, but we’ve got to be relentless in our behaviour.’

There were certainly positives for Robinson to reflect on from the weekend's quarter-final, particularly during an impressive start which was capped by goals from Jimmy-Jay Morgan and Donnell McNeilly less than three minutes apart to give us a 2-0 lead.

‘I thought the first 20 minutes or so, up until their first goal, we were pretty much excellent. We had really good control of the game and put ourselves in a great position at 2-0.

‘We did all the things well that we know work for us. We had good structure when we got the ball, which allowed us to play around them and through them quite comfortably, so we were stretching them across the pitch as well as in behind.

‘On the few occasions when they did have the ball we set up quickly and had good structure without the ball, which meant they couldn’t gain any sort of momentum.

‘I was just pleased that we had a real style about us in the first 25 minutes. You could clearly see what we are about and what we do.

‘We have to continue that and the lads have to believe that, within that, they will get plenty of opportunities to express themselves and show their own individual ability.’

However, the game's momentum shifted suddenly with two quick-fire Leeds goals to leave us going in for the half-time break level, and Robinson reminding his players of the need to never let their foot off the gas.

‘For 25 minutes they’d done nothing, really. Then once they got back to 2-2 the momentum shifted and football’s such a psychological game. That gives them belief and obviously we weren’t in the same place as we were, because we know we were 2-0 up.

‘Then we just got sloppy. We gave the ball away on two occasions needlessly, and that gave them a little bit of momentum from nowhere, which we didn’t need to do. Then we didn’t defend the corner well enough. That gave them belief, so we’ve got to look at that.

‘It’s that consistency of continually trying to do the right things and the players realising we’re not restricting their freedom to express themselves. But you still have to do the simple things really well in football, and for a little two-minute spell we didn’t do that.’

The Blues got things back on track in the second half, though. Zak Sturge found an early goal to retake the lead and it was one we rarely looked at risk of losing a second time around.

‘They did have a couple of chances, although we had a few chances as well, but I felt in the second half we restricted them to very little. There were only a couple of little opportunities. I feel the opportunity they had right at the death probably made it look closer than it was.

‘I thought we had pretty good control of the game in the second half, but never reached the heights of that first 25 minutes, when I thought we looked very comfortable.’