Unhappy Chelsea players will tell Antonio Conte to his face, says Thibaut Courtois

Thibaut Courtois says any Chelsea players secretly unhappy with Antonio Conte would not have gone to the media.

Recent reports suggested there was disharmony behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge, with claims that some were questioning Conte’s methods. It was suggested that the Italian’s harsh training regime was being blamed for a spate of injuries this season.

However Courtois says that the players are behind Conte and if there was an issue, they would tell their Italian coach.

‘When a top team has a few bad results the first thing they [the media] try to say is that the players are not happy and we’re not behind the coach, but against Watford you saw we fought for every moment and we fought when we were down, so everybody can see we’re behind the coach,’ he told Chelseafc.com.

‘Those rumours are easy to spread but I don’t think they are true. If somebody is unhappy, instead of going to the press I think they would say it internally, so it’s not true.

‘First of all, it’s the players that have to do it on the pitch so it was important to win, to fight. At the moment it’s more running, fighting and battling for every ball than maybe the best football.’

Chelsea returned to winning ways at the weekend following some disappointing results with a dramatic 4-2 comeback win over Watford.

They will hope to continue in that form tonight when they take on Everton in the League Cup.

‘It’s a cup, and with any cup you want to win it,’ said Courtois.

‘You want to go far. With injuries, maybe we don’t have the possibility to rotate a lot so we will have to see what team the manager puts out, but I don’t think it’s a moment to relax.’

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