Getty Images

In the previous seasons, Chelsea had men of steel in the team that helped push the club to greater heights.

Players like Frank Lampard, John Terry, Michael Essien and a host of them gave their all for the club.

John Obi Mikel and Branislav Ivanovic, with the likes of Michael Ballack, Ashley Cole and Florent Malouda are worthy mentions.

Chelsea manager Antonio Conte in his press conference talked about four of these players Chelsea have lost in recent times: Mikel, Terry, Drogba and Ivanovic. Conte has revealed he needs time to replace these players.

The Chelsea boss said: “We don’t have it (time) now. We need time, Chelsea needs time to work to improve this basis. For this reason, I said this season would be very difficult for us. We started a new process. We have lost a lot of strong players who created the previous basis: John Terry, Mikel, Ivanovic, Drogba…

“We lost a lot of players in the last few years and now we need to find the right way to build. We must have patience to build something important for the present but above all for the future. Now we don’t have this solid foundation and for this reason we have to work very hard and try to improve our squad.”