Football
Liam Twomey, Chelsea correspondent 6y

Chelsea must focus on catching Man United before Man City - Conte

Antonio Conte has told his Chelsea players to focus on taking second spot in the Premier League from Manchester United before thinking about the possibility of catching runaway leaders Manchester City.

City are eight points clear of United after taking a Premier League record 37 points from their opening 13 matches, while Chelsea lie a further three points adrift from Jose Mourinho's team in third place despite winning four of their last five games.

The early-season form of City has already led Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino to declare his team out of the Premier League title race. Conte is reluctant to do the same for Chelsea, but insisted that United should be his team's immediate target over the frantic festive fixture schedule.

"We have to look at ourselves and not the others," Conte said. "Now our target must be to see the team that is before us. In this case Manchester United. Our first target is to catch them up and if we are able to do this, then we can see the team who is staying before us.

"This must be our mentality and in every game we have to try to win and do our best. This must be the right mentality, winning mentality.

"We are in November and trying to do our best. We have 11 points less than Manchester City but we have played all games against the other five top teams. We are in the second round of the Champions League. We have to play the quarterfinal of the Carabao Cup. For the problems that we had from the start of the season we are doing our best.

"At the same time we have to look at ourselves. Manchester City are going very well. If you leave them out of the table there is Manchester United and we are three points behind.

"Manchester City are doing something incredible until now but we have to trust to continue to improve in our work in our team and try to do our best. This is the right way."

Conte has been vocal about Chelsea's small squad in recent weeks while pointedly praising City for working "very well in the transfer market" last summer. The Italian, however, would not be drawn on whether he will push his club to make significant reinforcements in the January transfer window.

"I think this moment is not the right moment [to speak about it]," he added. "We are in November and now we have to fight with this squad. I want to repeat that I am very happy to work with these players and try to do our best in this competition.

"If one day the club try to ask me something about this topic I can give my opinion, but at the same time I am very happy to work for this club with these players.

"The club knows very well we are trying to build something important for the present, for the future. In this moment we started to build something from the last season. Last season we were so good to win at the same time, but don't forget we are building and the club nows very well what is our situation at the moment."

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