Antonio Conte has revealed Chelsea have set a target to try and catch Manchester United before attempting to cut down Manchester City's sizeable lead in the Premier League table.
Chelsea, who won the title in May, trail runaway leaders City by 11 points in the top-flight standings but sit just six points behind second-placed United.
With nine games - five at home - to come in the final few weeks of the year for Conte's side, Chelsea will feel they can try and close the gap on Pep Guardiola's men, who have to play Manchester United and Tottenham in December.
But Conte admitted the first aim in his mind is trying to catch up with United, telling reporters on Tuesday: "We have to look at ourselves and not the others. 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 and 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.
"I think that it is right to talk about myself not about other person. We are in November and trying to do our best. We are doing our best and we are in November and we have 11 points less than Manchester City but we played all games against the other five top teams.
"We are in the second round of the Champions League. We have to play the quarter-finals 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 Manchester City out of the table there is Manchester United and we are three points behind.
"Manchester City is 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."
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