Chelsea manager Emma Hayes is delighted with the way that her summer signings have fit in at the club during the first half of the season.
Hayes added five new faces to her squad in the summer transfer window, those being defenders Kadeisha Buchanan and Ève Périsset and midfielders Kateřina Svitková, Jelena Čanković and Johanna Rytting Kaneryd. Buchanan and Périsset quickly eased their way into the side while midfield trio Svitková, Čanković and Rytting Kaneryd have grown as the season has gone on.
When speaking in a recent Chelsea press conference, Hayes hailed the character of the quintet whilst commenting that they are pushing the boundaries at the club.
“What I will say about the players that came in over the summer is that every single one of them is a super-professional,” Hayes said. “By that, I mean the behaviours that they display everyday means that nobody else can switch off.
“If you’re an established player who has been here a while, you just can’t switch off because they won’t and they impress me more and more.
“I am starting to see every new player here find their feet and progress. It will be an interesting second half of the season and I think the competition will be even more fierce in my squad.”
Chelsea have largely had good squad availability throughout the first half of the season. Hayes refused to put the fitness of her squad down to squad rotation, she highlighted the club’s training standards as a factor behind her players feeling fit and healthy both physically and mentally.
She said “I think that squad depth isn’t the only reason why you keep players on the pitch, there are a whole host of reasons to keeping players fit and healthy.
“Having the depth means that you can train at a higher level. It is less about rotations in games, for me, it is about quality training and making sure that players are being pushed to go to a higher level. That’s probably the biggest reason why we have a large squad.
“You can have a large squad and it doesn’t mean you have good quality but we’ve got both, we’ve got a large squad and top quality.”
Chelsea return to action after the mid-season break with a fixture against London rivals Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on 15 January.