Cahill offers Benitez backing

Gary Cahill has offered more support for Rafa Benitez, insisting the team have become much more defensively sound under the new Chelsea manager..

England centre-back Cahill also explained that, because of the greater time they have spent together in training over the past few weeks, as opposed to constantly travelling for matches, it has helped the process.

"Since [Benitez] came we have tightened up as a unit, defensively and as a team," he said. "That's given us a platform to build on. It was hard at first to get his points across because we were playing games almost every other day.

"Now the players are adapting, they know what's expected of them and it's working well at the minute."

Cahill, speaking ahead of the club's Club World Cup semi-final against Monterrey in Yokohama, also said that it was only now that the size of the event has registered.

"Since coming here, it's sunk in now how big it is," he said. "It's hard to get into the competition in the first place. We've come all this way and want to win it. Our Brazilian players have said it's absolutely huge for them and we saw the send-off [Corinthians] got at the airport."