Cech: Chelsea youngsters must stand up and be counted

Petr Cech insists that the whole team had to stand-up tall and be counted to get out of their slump, and that is what he told the team.

Chelsea appear to have turned a corner under Rafa Benitez, with consecutive wins for the first time since September, and Cech believes the team has more balance.

The Czech goalkeeper has been stand-in captain in the absence of John Terry and vice-captain Frank Lampard, and revealed he feels his influence on the team regardless of the arm-band, saying: “You don’t need the armband to feel more responsibility, It’s the same for any player, everybody relies on you.

“You are the one who tries to help people through the difficult periods. Especially young and new players who haven’t been through that situation before. This is where your experience can count and you can try to help them.

“It’s not about shouting and screaming, or even harsh words. It’s about finding the right balance to remind people where they are, or what you want to achieve, and what we should do to improve.

“You can use different words but it’s not about how many times you start with the F-words. It’s not about that. It’s about people who should feel the responsibility for the situation and recognise a responsibility to get out of it.

“It’s easy to say: ‘I’m new and young, so I’m looking away from it.’ Everybody is responsible and has to help the team get out of the situation. But really you just need to find the right way to do it and as soon as we started playing better again and got better results, you could see the confidence in the younger players rising higher, faster.

“Now we want to take the games where we’ve played very well into this tournament and, if we have success here, we can take it into the Premier League.”

Wise words from the influential 30 year-old, who has been a key member of our squad since his arrival 8 years ago. Cech doesn’t shy away when the tide goes against us, he fights and pushes the team forwards. I’m glad he signed a 4-year contract at the end of last season, as I would have hated to see him in the same situation as Lampard and Ashley Cole.

Is our slump over? and is Torres back?