When the Blues opened our campaign at Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon, it was probably not the back four lining up in front of Sanchez that many would have expected just over a month ago, when we ended 2024/25 by winning the FIFA Club World Cup in the USA.

However, since then, Levi Colwill suffered a knee injury when we returned for pre-season two weeks ago, and a knock for Tosin Adarabioyo in the last few days also ruled him out of contention for our first Premier League fixture.

However, in Trevoh Chalobah and teenager Josh Acheampong – the latter making just his third start in the competition – Enzo Maresca found the centre-back pairing which could hold firm to shut out Palace.

‘We had a couple of weeks of pretty intense pre-season training and unluckily we got a couple of injuries to very important players for us,’ said our goalkeeper.

‘But I think the boys that have come into the team have shown up. Everybody is ready to play in this team, everybody has the quality, and we kept the clean sheet.’

The absence of Colwill and Tosin was also expected to have an affect on the way Chelsea build play from the back, but again Sanchez believes his defence performed well in that area, although it was the next step in our play where Palace caused us the most problems.

‘We’ve got quality on the ball and Palace hold behind, in the midfield. So to play out was not difficult, from my view, but to find Moises [Caicedo] and Enzo [Fernandez] in midfield was hard, so we had to play a bit more wide.

‘But I think the boys did what they had to do, they created the chances, and with different margins we could have scored one or two goals.’

It was those fine margins, which are to be expected at this high level against a team who had just added the Community Shield to the FA Cup they won last season, that left Sanchez coming away from our opening match of 2025/26 with mixed emotions about the result.

‘It is a bit of both, happy and frustrated. I’m happy because I think the team created some chances, I think we played well and at the end of the day it was down to slim margins,’ explained the Spaniard.

‘But obviously I’m a bit disappointed because it’s not the result we wanted. We wanted to start with a win, we wanted to carry on from the last couple of months we’ve had, which were really good. It hasn’t happened, so we just need to concentrate now and carry on.

‘We conceded a couple of chances where I think we could have been a bit stronger in the 50-50s in the middle, that’s something we need to be careful with, but the boys created chances and we believe we could have scored a couple.

‘At the end of the day that’s football. We will take the clean sheet, we will take the point, and go onto the next one.’

That next game comes in less than a week's time, when our first away trip of the season takes us across the capital for another derby, against West Ham United at the London Stadium on Friday evening.