Gary Cahill has told his Chelsea team-mates they must use the same character against Steaua Bucharest to progress in the Europa League as they did to stay in the FA Cup at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Chelsea go into the second leg of their last 16 Europa League tie at Stamford Bridge tomorrow night trailing 1-0 from the first match in Romania last week.
Rafael Benitez’s side will be under huge pressure not to concede an away goal or they will have to score at least three times to get to the last eight.
But Cahill feels Chelsea can succeed if they play with the same intensity as they did to come from two goals down at half-time against Manchester United to force a replay in their FA Cup quarter-final.
When asked if the United game has given the team a good platform to face Steaua, he said: “Yes, it does. We’re going into the game like we did in the second half [against United], we’re down and we need to take that same mentality we showed to come back and kick on from there.There were a lot of positives to take from that game.
“We started off quite sloppy and we looked all over the shop.
“Second half we looked brilliant and played some of our best football in weeks.
“At 2-0 down it is easy to think it’s not going well but the character we showed in the second half proved we really had that fight in us.
“You don’t always play the best football but if you have a big heart and dig in like we did, then you create chances and play fantastic stuff.”
