Romeo Lavia shows true Chelsea colours as Enzo Maresca told exactly what he wants to hear
Romeo Lavia has shown his true colours ahead of Chelsea's clash against Panathinaikos. The West Londoners will lock horns with the Greek outfit in Athens on Thursday night as both sides look to climb the Conference League table.
Chelsea suffered a 2-1 defeat to Liverpool at the weekend, meanwhile, Panathinaikos enjoyed a 1-0 win over OFI Crete. Enzo Maresca will be determined to extend his perfect start to the European campaign after storming past Gent earlier this month.
Renato Veiga, Pedro Neto, Christopher Nkunku and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall all managed to get on the score sheet in what was an impressive performance. But, unfortunately for the Blues, lapses of concentration saw them concede shortly after the break and in the final minutes of the game.
Nevertheless, ahead of the Conference League bout, Lavia has posted an inspirational message to his Instagram story. The 20-year-old midfielder wrote: "Keep the positives, learn from the negative points, reset quick then get back to the daily grind."
It's not the first time that Lavia has shown strong leadership qualities. Following Chelsea's disheartening result at the weekend, the former Southampton and Manchester City prospect issued a very mature assessment of the heavyweight bout.
"I think we played a very good game overall," Lavia told the official club website. "Whether we deserved more, that’s difficult for me to say but I thought we created a lot of chances and controlled the game in large spells.
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"Did we deserve more? For me, probably yes but that’s just my initial thoughts and we should still take heart from our performance. Coming to Anfield and playing such a strong side, you know that there will be times where we lose transitions and they can counter but I felt we dealt well with their threat on the whole and we created a number of opportunities of our own."
Lavia added: "We knew we were playing a really strong side and unfortunately they came out on top but I think there are a lot of positives we can take from this game to take for the rest of the season."