Dele: "It was a top performance, but not perfect"

It says a lot about the drive of the team that Dele Alli insisted the performance against Chelsea ‘wasn’t perfect’.

The England international played a key role in the 3-1 victory as we dominated from the first whistle to end the Blues’ unbeaten start to the campaign and climb above them into third with our 10th win in 13 matches in the Premier League.

Dele maintained his goalscoring run with his sixth in six games against Chelsea, glancing home the crucial opening goal from Christian Eriksen’s free-kick as we went after Maurizio Sarri’s men from the off. Harry Kane soon made it 2-0 and after going close twice and being denied by Kepa Arrizabalaga twice, Heung-Min Son added a memorable third from Dele’s assist in the second half.

“It was a top performance from us, not perfect, there are still some things we need to improve on, but we dominated from the first whistle,” said Dele.

“The fans were right behind us, kept us going and we didn’t want to give Chelsea a chance to play their way into the game.

“We knew how important it was to start the game well and to maintain that level for 90 minutes is difficult but we showed great character to do that and we’re obviously happy with the win.”

It was pointed out to Dele that the high pressing game worked a treat as Chelsea tried to play out from defence with the energy of the front four - Dele, Sonny, Harry and Christian – something to behold.

He added: “We knew they like to play out from the back and keep the ball - they are a possession-based team like a lot of the top teams are now.

“We wanted to get down their necks early and win the ball high up the pitch and if not, turn the ball over where we could and attack them as quickly as we could once they were out of position.

“We created a lot of chances, maybe on another day we would have scored 10 goals! It was a great performance for the whole 90 minutes.

"They’re a great team and they’ve started the season really well. It was difficult but we have to keep improving. Like I said, it wasn’t a perfect game, there are still things we need to improve on so we need to take this into the next game and make sure we improve every game."