Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy is backing his team-mates to work hard in pre-season, so they can fight for the title this coming season.

Chelsea finished in third place last season, after a fine start to the campaign that saw Chelsea top the league until December.

Mendy has admitted he doesn’t see a huge gap between the two leading sides Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea.

“Now it’s time to work,” he said.

“Let’s see how the season will start. When you play for Chelsea, you play for the Champions League, for the national cups and of course for the top four, so we have to be ambitious.

“If you think about last year, until December we were close but then we had a lot of things against us like injury and COVID cases, and we lost a bit our level of performance.

“If you watch our games against Liverpool and Man City last year, I don’t think you can see a big gap between us and them so we just need this year to start well, keep our performance, and let’s see what happens.”