Asmir Begovic has reflected on the first week back in pre-season training which culminated in yesterday’s game against Rapid Vienna.

The Bosnian played the full 90 minutes between the posts in Antonio Conte’s first match in charge of Chelsea. It followed five days of training at Cobham and Begovic gave his assessment of what life has been like since he returned to work after the summer break.

‘It’s been a good, hard week with lots of training and it was nice to finish it off with a match and get the cobwebs off,’ the keeper said.

‘We are buying into what the manager wants us to do. We are working hard to try and improve. We’re
working in a different way so it’s going to take a bit of time to process but so far so good, and I think over time we’ll get better.

‘He communicates very well, so he got his message across at half-time and before the game. We expect to work hard, that’s part of pre-season. We’re trying to be very disciplined. The work ethic is very strong.

‘We’ve got some hard days ahead, we need to get our base fitness and it is something that will do us good in the long run. We’re enjoying the hard work.’

Away from yesterday’s match action there was good news with the confirmation midfielder N’Golo Kante has signed for the club. Begovic gave his verdict on our second summer transfer following the arrival earlier this month of Belgian Michy Batshuayi.

‘He was a huge player for Leicester last season and he had a good impact with France as well at the Euros, so it’s a player we are looking forward to adding to the team.

‘You can never have too deep a squad so the more options we have, the better. Kante will add a lot to our team and make us better.’