“It came off today!” – John Stones reveals training routines that helped Man City to victory over Chelsea | OneFootball

John Stones has revealed how certain aspects of Manchester City’s game that were worked on in training helped him and his teammates to victory over Chelsea on Thursday night.

A single goal from Riyad Mahrez in the second-half at Stamford Bridge – assisted by Jack Grealish – was enough to take a crucial three points home for Manchester City, as they cut the gap between themselves and Arsenal to just five points at the top of the table.

Defensively, City saw significant improvements, especially in situations similar to that of the attack that saw Everton steal a point from the Etihad Stadium last weekend through a sublime strike from Demarai Gray.

Speaking to Sky Sports after the game at Stamford Bridge, John Stones was keen to emphasis the magnitude of the victory, after a difficult few days in the run-up to the clash.

“It’s a big three points, after the other day (against Everton), the overriding feeling was we’ve dropped two points and should have got more out of the game,” Stones said. “We wanted to put it right today (against Chelsea).

“Especially how we played in the second half was brilliant and to come away with three points is just what we needed.”

The 28 year-old was quizzed on exactly what had changed going into the second-half, after a first 45 minutes that saw Manchester City struggle to get a grip on the game while operating with a relatively unusual system featuring Joao Cancelo in an attacking wing role.

“Maybe the belief, we rushed a lot of our play in the first-half,” John Stones said. “We tried to play too many crucial passes that got cut out. We didn’t retain the ball as well as we usually do.

“We spoke at half time, we knew we had to use the ball better and wait for space to open. Credit to Chelsea, they played really compact, we couldn’t get many balls through the lines and had to play wider.”

While highlighting that things worked much better for Manchester City in the second-half, John Stones also admitted that the defensive aspects of their game were things that had been worked on in the days prior to the clash against Chelsea.

“It all came together in the second half – a few big moments, blocks, defending that we’ve been working on in training. It came off today.”

Stones and his Manchester City teammates will quickly regroup and turn their attentions to another meeting with the West London outfit, as they face Chelsea once again on Sunday afternoon in the FA Cup third round.

The defensive union have been further boosted this week too through the return of Aymeric Laporte, after the Spaniard had missed the past couple of games through a reported back problem.