Chelsea midfielder, Nemanja Matic, claims that losing 3-0 away to Arsenal recently encouraged them to work harder.

The Blues thrashed Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United 4-0 at the weekend, temporarily allowing the footballing world to forget their hatred for the London club and split our sides with laughter at Jose’s expense and Nemanja Matic is crediting Arsenal with helping them.

It seems that Chelsea’s loss to the Gunners earlier in the season is what gave them the fight to topple the Red Devils.

“You know sometimes you need to lose the game to wake up,” said the 28-year-old.

“The Arsenal game was a wakeup call for us. We knew that we had to do better, to want more, and we did that. It’s easy to say we needed to work harder but after Arsenal we knew we had to show that we had quality, and we have done that in the last three games. We have showed quality, we don’t concede, and we score goals.”

Were Chelsea really that good or were United just terrible? Probably a bit of both. However, Antonio Conte’s side have been doing well since we thrashed them. They’ve managed to climb up to fourth in the Premier League table, just one point behind us, and haven’t conceded a single goal since. They’ve scored nine in three.

It’s very easy for Matic to say that they’ve had a wakeup call and far more inspiring for the fans since their results are backing this up. However, perhaps Conte’s team has just started to gel and, as I said before, perhaps United are just that bad.