Kieran Trippier: "We can't take our eye off the ball"

Kieran Trippier felt the defensive effort in our Carabao Cup semi-final, first leg victory against Chelsea said everything about the mentality of the squad.

The full-back admitted we ‘had to dig deep’ as Chelsea turned up the heat in the second half but our organisation in the final third meant most of their efforts came at Paulo Gazzaniga from distance.

In the end, Harry Kane’s penalty on 26 minutes proved decisive on the night and we’ll take a 1-0 lead to Stamford Bridge for the second leg on Thursday 24 January (7.45pm).

“It was a difficult night,” said ‘Trips’. “Everyone knows how good Chelsea are and what a threat they have with individual players but I thought we played very well.

“We defended when we needed to, especially in the second half when we had to dig deep for 15, 20 minutes. It just shows the mentality of our group.

“You see how hard ‘H’ (Harry Kane) and Sonny (Heung-Min Son) work off the ball, the running they do, but I thought the 11 players who started worked their socks off and the substitutes who came on were important as well.

“The most important thing is a clean sheet but we’ve another leg to go. We’ve got the advantage but we can’t take our eye off the ball. If we play how we did tonight, show that determination for 90 minutes-plus, hopefully we can go through.”

Paulo made one top-drawer save to divert Callum Hudson-Odoi’s deflected cross onto the post and his calmness in such an important game - arguably the biggest of his career - illustrated another point from Kieran that every player in the squad is ready to perform.

He added: “Yes, Paulo is calm, all the goalkeepers are - Michel, Hugo and Paulo - and we’ve got players as well who are not playing, Kyle (Walker-Peters) and Serge (Aurier) for instance, they are scoring and assisting for fun!

"We’ve got the players who step up to the task. Paulo had a fantastic game, like everyone else.”