Cesar Azpilicueta confident Chelsea can 'fight' for FA Cup and top-four spot

Vaishali Bhardwaj18 March 2018

Cesar Azpilicueta is confident Chelsea have the quality to win the FA Cup and secure a top-four spot despite the club's struggles this season.

Chelsea take on Leicester City in their FA Cup quarter-final clash at the King Power Stadium on Sunday, just four days after the Blues were dumped out of the Champions League by Barcelona.

Chelsea's exit from Europe's premier competition means the FA Cup is now the only trophy the club can win this season, with coach Antonio Conte saying on Friday that he will jointly prioritise the competition with securing a Champions League place for next term.

And Azpilicueta is confident the Blues can achieve their aims in the final few months of the campaign because of the "fight" the Chelsea players will put on against Leicester.

"After a defeat, and going out of the Champions League, we have a chance to bounce back and get through to the semi-finals of the FA Cup," Azpilicueta told Chelsea's official website.

"It’s a massive trophy to get and it’s the only chance we have this year so for all the fans and the club it will be a great opportunity to get back to Wembley. It’s the one.

"It’s the only chance we have so we have to go for it and I’m sure the team will fight very hard to get into the semi-finals.

"We have two months ahead of us to finish in a strong way, to fight for the FA Cup and to get into the top four, so we have targets to fight for and I’m sure we will do it."

In Pictures | Barcelona vs Chelsea | 14/03/2018

1/25

After Chelsea's game against Leicester on Sunday, the Blues will have a two-week break for international duty before the players return and start preparing to host Tottenham in the Premier League.

Spurs currently sit five points above Chelsea in the final Champions League spot, but Azpilicueta says the Blues will go all out to ensure they beat Tottenham and get their top-four hopes back on track.

"I think we have these two targets and we have to go for both of them," Azpilicueta added. "Today is a massive game, we know we are playing against a tough team in Leicester and after the international break we have to come back and try to get the top-four spot.

"We will go for it. We know that every year it becomes harder and harder to get into the Champions League and we have to know that we must fight really hard. We are fifth at the moment and we have to recover all of the points that we lost in the past."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in