Eden Hazard was among the goals again for Chelsea against Bournemouth and claims to be “enjoying” his football after a summer of intense transfer talk.
The Belgium international has been eased into the 2018-19 campaign by new Blues boss Maurizio Sarri after helping his country to a third-place finish at the World Cup finals in Russia.
That approach has delivered rich rewards, with the 27-year-old forward already boasting two Premier League goals and as many assists through four appearances.
Hazard has shown no sign of the exit rumours, which followed him around for several months, being a distraction, with a man who was heavily linked with Real Madrid delighted to be starring again in the Premier League.
He told reporters after finding the target in a 2-0 victory over Bournemouth which preserved Chelsea’s faultless start to the season: "I'm feeling confident, I'm enjoying my football, we have a new manager and lots of good players.
"I know when I play good the team play good, so I need to be ready for everything. The season is long, but we will fight to the end, and we will keep improving."
Chelsea took 72 minutes to break the deadlock against the Cherries at Stamford Bridge, with Pedro opening the scoring before Hazard netted five minutes from time.
The Belgian added: "We were always confident we would score. When you're playing like that you have to be patient.
"We have a lot of players that can score any minute. We did well to keep the ball and move it quickly, because we were too slow in the first half."
Getty Images
While Pedro and Hazard delivered the end product for Sarri’s side, there were plenty of other promising performances put in by an in-form team.
Marcos Alonso has enjoyed a productive start to the season, with a man back in the Spain squad delivering the assist for Chelsea’s second on Saturday.
He told BBC Sport of a hard-fought win: "We are working very well, but there is still room for improvement. We're feeling good, we like what we're doing and we are 100 per cent focused on what we're doing.
"It was difficult with them playing 4-5-1 but we were patient and we always know we have attacking players who can break teams down.
"The mentality and the fresh stuff we are doing - we're working hard on the training ground too - when we give everything we know we have the quality to win.
"Our focus now goes to the national teams but when we come back it will still be only the fifth game so there is a long way to go."
Chelsea will return to action after the international break with a visit from Cardiff, before attention then shifts to the start of their Europa League campaign and a trip to Greece to take on PAOK.
.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&width=640&quality=60)