West Ham v Chelsea: I want Hammers to do well, says Diego Costa

View: Costa admires West Ham
Julian Finney/Getty Images
Simon Johnson23 October 2015

Diego Costa says West Ham’s emergence as a top-four threat to Chelsea is a positive step for English football.

The Blues take on the fourth-placed Hammers at Upton Park tomorrow knowing they will trail their London rivals by nine points should they lose.

Slaven Bilic’s side are one of the form teams in the League and have already beaten Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool to spark hopes that they may be able to qualify for the Champions League next season.

And Costa told Standard Sport: “I hope they do well. I have always liked one of the smaller clubs, one not regarded as a contender for the title, to achieve something. It would be good for football if West Ham do that.

“But we have to be honest and it is very difficult to do that here.

“This League is very competitive. I remember the same thing happening with Southampton last season, they were doing great but they couldn’t maintain the level.”

The task of catching West Ham is just one of many challenges Chelsea face after beginning the campaign with four defeats in nine League games.

It has left them in 12th place and with most experts writing off their chances of retaining the title. But Costa added: “I am going to be totally honest, I don’t even look at the table. I believe it’s a big mistake.

“Right now we just have to look at ourselves and the way we’re playing. We have to turn this around.

“I can’t say what is going to happen. If we win every remaining game this season, we will probably win the League, but we all know this is a very competitive division and that’s not going to happen.

Player Ratings: Dynamo Kiev vs Chelsea

1/11

“The other teams will drop points and we have to turn our results around in order to enjoy our football again.

“Our objective is to find ourselves again as a team, as a group. We have an amazing dressing room, an amazing relationship with the manager and the players.

“We need two or three months of winning in order to find ourselves again and then we can set our objective for the rest of the season and what it means for the title race.”

Diego Costa is dressed in 19th century football clothing to celebrate the launch of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, set in Victorian London. The new game is available to own today on PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system and Xbox One and will be available for Windows PC on November 19. Watch behind the scenes footage from the photo shoot at www.youtube.com/assassinscreeduk

 

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in