Chelsea: Enzo Maresca reflects on 'toughest defeat' of reign as Blues set to assess new injury blow | OneFootball

Chelsea have now just won just twice in their last 10 Premier League outings

Enzo Maresca is remaining upbeat despite Chelsea suffering a third straight defeat

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Enzo Maresca labelled Saturday night’s defeat to Aston Villa the “toughest” of his Chelsea reign - but insisted his team are one win away from reviving their season.

The result means the Chelsea have taken just nine points from their last ten league games, and lost three on the bounce across competitions following back-to-back defeats at Brighton this month.

Maresca, though, insisted he was pleased with his team’s response to those losses and left gutted by Villa’s winner, which came a minute from time courtesy of a Filip Jorgensen howler.

"This is, for me, probably the toughest defeat of the season,” Maresca said. “The reason why is because the reaction from Brighton was brilliant, the performance was very good and unfortunately, in this moment, it is not enough. That's why it is a tough one.

"I don't think we deserved to lose the game, to be honest. In this league, you have to be clinical. The difference most of the time is inside of the box. Unfortunately at 1-0 up we had some chances and didn't score, at 1-1, we had some chances and didn't score.”

Defeat for Bournemouth earlier on Saturday means Chelsea’s defeat has not yet seen them lose further ground in the race for the Champions League, with Manchester City in fourth not in action until facing league leaders Liverpool on Sunday.

Nonetheless, the Blues are in desperate need of an upturn in fortune and Tuesday night’s visit of bottom side Southampton would appear the ideal opportunity.

“I have a feeling in this moment that we need to win a game to go again,” Maresca added. “But now, the good thing in two or three days we have one more game at home and hopefully we can finally, with our fans in our stadium, try to get the three points and from there, start again and try to go again.

“Today's performance compared to the performance at Brighton was much, much, much better. We have 12 games to go - and again, my feeling is that winning one, we go again."

Maresca, did however, did offer a positive injury update on Trevoh Chalobah.

The defender was forced off inside the opening 10 minutes as he appeared to be struggling with his lower back after a coming together with Asensio.

"Trevor, we’ll see its early," Maresca said. "We’ll see tomorrow. He looks quite good now."