As a man well acquainted with title races of years gone by, Petr Cech is hoping our successes in the past can help shape more glory in the future.
There are five teams within four points of one another at the top of the Barclays Premier League table, and by the end of the next week, every team will have played three more games, giving those title challengers a great opportunity to accumulate points, and fast.
Our Czech custodian, enjoying his 10th Christmas period at Stamford Bridge, hopes our sustained spells tussling for trophies over that time will benefit his team in the busy days ahead, and beyond.
‘We just need to keep working and make sure everybody feels confident to play,’ Cech explained. ‘There’s no big secret to it.
‘We have players with experience who have won things in the past years, so let’s see if we can use that to our advantage. We have been in this situation many times, fighting for titles and playing under pressure. You have a lot of pressure during the period of Christmas, and then towards the end of the season, because you need to get results, so hopefully our experience will pay off.
‘It will be really interesting to see what will happen over Christmas and then at the start of the New Year. Everybody from the top six teams has a chance so we have to see who will be the most consistent.
‘We are happy to be among those six and we will do our best to try to get the most amount of points at the end of the season.’
Ahead of two home dates in four days, Cech is keen to stress how important it is to stay in touch with the title-chasing pack even if the team is performing a little short of its best, pointing out that artistic merit will only get you so far.
‘In figure skating you are judged by how nice your routine is, but football is about trying to get points and score goals,’ he says.
‘Nobody has a magic wand which you can wave and everything will go the way you want. It can take some time. We are doing well because we are challenging for the title and we have qualified for the next round of the Champions League. Obviously there have been some results we didn’t like but we are improving.
‘Now we have two games at home and we will try to make the most of them. Regarding our position in the league we are right there, two points behind. We don’t depend on any other results; if we win our games then we have a big chance of winning the title.
‘We know we haven’t hit the best level of this team yet, we are in the process of improving and hopefully that will show.’