Maurizio Sarri urges Chelsea to improve despite winning start

Maurizio Sarri admits Chelsea have to improve “very quickly” after his first game as manager ended in a narrow 1-0 friendly win against Perth Glory.

Spanish forward Pedro scored the only goal for the Blues in Australia, netting inside five minutes.

New head coach Sarri, who replaced the sacked Antonio Conte on July 14, was satisfied with some of his side’s display but felt they should have won by a more comfortable margin.

The Blues were without a host of key players for the trip because of their involvement in the World Cup, including Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois, N’Golo Kante and Willian, although there was a debut for £50million midfielder Jorginho.

According to the club’s Twitter account, Sarri and his team immediately boarded a flight back to London after the game, and the Italian is keen to start working with his players at their training ground in Cobham.

“The result was not the mirror of the game, but it’s more important in this period the performance,” former Napoli boss Sarri told chelseafc.com.

“I am satisfied by the performance in the first half and the first 15 minutes of the second half, not the last 30 minutes.

“We lost the distance between the defenders and the midfielders, but we know we have to work. We have to go back to Cobham and work very hard. We know we have to improve very quickly.

“I expect us to improve match by match. It’s not easy at this moment because we are without 12 players from the World Cup.

“It has been a difficult week with a long flight, jet lag, but at the end of the week I can say we have worked well, and we have played a good match for 60 minutes.”

FA Cup holders Chelsea face Manchester City in the Community Shield on August 5 before beginning their Premier League campaign at Huddersfield six days later.

Sarri’s second game in charge will be a friendly against Inter Milan next Saturday in Nice.