Hector Bellerin has admitted that there were doubts in the squad following Arsenal’s poor start to the season.

Arsenal’s manic victory over Leicester on the opening day was quickly forgotten when the team stumbled at Stoke and were blitzed at Liverpool.

It was all doom and gloom after those games, and Bellerin has admitted that doubt was starting to spread in the Arsenal squad.

“After the four games that we’ve played, there’s been a lot of doubts in the team and I think it’s a game [v Chelsea] where we can put those things to bed,” he told Arsenal Player.

Since then, we’ve managed to stabilise things a bit with wins over Bournemouth and Cologne. We now have some form going into a difficult game against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, a venue that hasn’t been kind to us in recent years.

While Bellerin knows it’ll be a difficult game, he’s hoping that Arsenal can replicate their performances from the Community Shield and FA Cup final.

“We’re playing Chelsea and we’ve beaten them three times in the last four games, so we have a good record against them, but we know it’s always different playing at Stamford Bridge. They won the league last year so we obviously know they are a very strong team. 

“With [Antonio] Conte there, they work really hard, they do very well tactically, so we have to be ready for the challenge and we know as a team we can beat them because we’ve done it before. Now it’s up to us to turn up and do things right. 

“We’ve come [into this game] from beating Bournemouth with a very good team performance, especially defensively, which is what was lacking in the last two games. The team was really solid at the back, but the good thing was that from the striker to the  goalkeeper, everyone was running in the same direction. 

“That was missing from the last few games. We just need to play in the same way we’ve played before against Chelsea, in the FA Cup or in the Community Shield. We know that the team’s really strong, but we know that when we play 100 per cent and everyone turns up, we know we can beat them.”

Arsenal have won three of their last four games against Chelsea, but haven’t won at Stamford Bridge since 2011.

They’re well capable of beating this Chelsea side, but there’s something about that stadium that makes Arsenal lose focus.

Last season, Arsenal struggled to cope with Chelsea’s wing-backs. Bellerin may or may not recall being taken out by Marcos Alonso during Chelsea’s first goal of that game.

Hopefully this time around, Arsenal will “want it more” and put in a good performance.