Every word Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca said on Cole Palmer, what Romeo Lavia did and Liverpool

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca was full of positivity after his side recorded arguably their most important win of the season in a 3-1 victory over Liverpool on Sunday afternoon at Stamford Bridge. The result leaves them level on points with Newcastle United in fourth place.

Manchester City are only one point above Chelsea in third, with just three Premier League matches remaining. Perhaps more importantly for Chelsea, they opened up a gap to Nottingham Forest in sixth as they seek to secure Champions League qualification.

Jarrell Quansah then put through his own net after Virgil van Dijk could only clear into him when defending the Liverpool area.

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Van Dijk set up a nervy finish with a late header but Cole Palmer converted from the penalty spot in stoppage time to wrap things up. Here, football.london has

Maresca: Before we start, I would like to send my condolences to Paul [Lagan], one of your colleagues. Unfortunately this week [he] passed away and in this moment you realise that there are much more important things than a football game. My condolences to his family and the people around him.

Thanks for that Enzo. Is that the old Cole Palmer that we have gotten used to seeing?

Probably from the outside but we saw Cole day-by-day on the training ground and he is exactly the same way, scoring goals and happy. Enjoying the session.

For sure, when he is not scoring goals he is not happy and the reason why is because he probably wants to help the team and the club to reach something important.

Romeo Lavia got a standing ovation today from the fans. What did you think of his performance?

You can see that we are a better team with Romeo. Unfortunately, he has been injured for most of the season. Probably in this moment he has been the difference between us and many clubs because we had many important players for us that have been injured. Romeo is one of them. Wes Fofana is another one.

We had Nico [Jackson] for two months [out]. Romeo showed again today how important he is for the team and how good he is.

Could you have kept up the pace with Liverpool if he hadn't been injured?

I really think that Liverpool deserve to win the Premier [League]. First of all because they have been consistent. Second of all because they had consistently the [whole] squad available, something that unfortunately the rest [of the teams] have not.

Today again they show the reason why the have won the Premier League. We did not plan, I promise you, the game to defend deep. We plan the game to high press in the way we always [do] but sometimes the opposition is so good that you have to defend deep and you have to adapt and the players dealt with that very good.

What do you and the players take from this until the end of the season?

We go game-by-game for sure. Today the performance has been a good performance, especially for the effort of the players. I think we have for sure some moments a little bit been up and down for part of the season but overall I am happy in the way the players are trying to do their job.

What is Palmer's reaction tonight? How is he?

He is happy for sure because he scored and because we won but I did not see Cole [being] different to two months ago, three months ago. I said many times he has scored 14 goals for us in 20 Premier League games but unfortunately he did not score many goals in the last part of the season.

Now we have three more games and also on Thursday the second leg. Hopefully he can help us until the end.

How is Christopher Nkunku?

Christo will be out for, I'm not sure, I think one week, two weeks. We are going to see. He will be out for the next 10 days, 15 days.

How significant is the timing of this for Cole?

Very important. Probably two or three games ago I said to you that if we are to reach the Premier League [ambitions] we need Nico goals and Cole goals. Nico scored against Everton, give us three points. Cole scored today. If we want to be there and we want to finish top five then we need Cole and Nico goals.

Hopefully they can score some more goals until the end.

Did you expect him to shoot when he hit the post?

Cole is the kind of player who can do things that nobody expect because he is a different [kind of] player. When he has the ball I expect anything because he can do anything.

How much of a lift is Palmer's goal and the celebrations for everyone?

My feeling is that it is already a long time from when you work with the players every day, I have the feeling that they are all on the same page and in the same direction with the way we want to play but also in terms of creating the right culture that I think is so important.

How important is consistency in your XI and how close is this to your strongest team?

I think we have some players on the bench that they also help us a lot this season. Reece James is one of them. Tosin [Adarabioyo] is one of them. Jadon [Sancho] was one of them and the rest, you see in the semi-final the other day that Kiernan [Dewsbury-Hall] was very good.

It's important if you want to fight for something that all of them are going in one direction.

How much momentum can you get from a result like this with tough matches coming up?

They are all going to be tough but now you have to go game-by-game and the reason why the staff, the coaching staff, the players at the end are so happy, even the fans, is because at this stage of the season you need to win games and for sure, today probably the environment was the best environment of this season with the fans, this is what we need every game, fantastic. It is so good.

What is the advantage at this stage of the season? Is it chasing or being the chased ones in terms of the pressure?

That's a good question. I don't know, to be honest. No, it's difficult because if you are there then the ones in behind they want to chase you. If you are chasing, I don't know. The only thing I would like is top finish at the end of the season.

What did you learn from finding a way at the end of last season with Leicester City when it was touch-and-go?

For sure last year's experience has been great in that sense and you can learn things. My personal opinion is when you don't win games and you struggle with results, you have always to analyse the game.

We did not win some games when we were not good enough but also we did not win games when the team was good and deserved to win so it is game-by-game, analyse the game. See how we can improve.