Gary Cahill is determined to build on Chelsea’s recent victory in the Champions League against Maccabi Tel Aviv with a win against Arsenal on Saturday.

The Chelsea defender spoke after the 4-0 win at Stamford Bridge and highlighted the importance a victory can have on the team’s morale. The England international also explained how, because Arsenal lost against Dinamo Zagreb, the Blues may have added confidence but we’ll be looking to bounce back, so ultimately, the mid-week results don’t mean a lot.

“It was the ideal game for us,” said Cahill. “We were dominant throughout, kept a clean sheet and scored four goals. It was exactly what we were looking for to try to get us up and running.

“It means we’ll go into training in better spirits than we have been going into training. Happier, more lively. Saturday is a huge game. I’m not going to say it’s going to have an absolutely massive impact on that because it probably won’t but in terms of the feel-good factor around us, it certainly will.”

Cahill added, “It’s normal when you’ve had a bad run or you lose games that certain players dip in confidence, that’s just natural. The only thing that turns that around is winning games. That is why [beating Maccabi] was so pleasing. That’s the only thing that can turn things around: win, win, win. And we’ve got another chance to do that on Saturday.”

Chelsea have been on a pretty bad run in the Premier League so far, only racking up four points and one win in five games. When compared with title rivals Manchester City, who have won all of their matches, it does appear that all isn’t quite as peachy in the Chelsea ranks as we’ve been led to believe. However, Cahill insists that after their victory against the Israeli team, the Blues want to get back to winning ways.

“No one will go out on this pitch thinking about mid-week,” he said. “Both teams will be fully focused on what they’ve got to do. For us we want to build confidence. For them they will want a response [after the Dinamo result]. I don’t think it will have a major impact.”

Rather than allowing Chelsea to have the mental advantage over us, we should use our loss as motivation to go to Stamford Bridge and show the rest of the league what we’re actually capable of when we turn up.