Roberto Di Matteo admitted luck played its part in Chelsea's dramatic 3-2 champions League victory over Shakhtar Donetsk at Stamford Bridge.
Fernando Torres and Oscar scored for Chelsea in the first half, with Willian's brace, one early in the first half and the second in the beginning of the second, making the game 2-2. With the match seemingly heading for a draw, substitute Victor Moses popped up to head the ball in off a corner in the last kick of the game to take Chelsea joint top with Shakhtar on seven points.
"In terms of the timing of the winning goal I would agree there was an element of luck," Di Matteo admitted. But playing against a good team I thought we deserved to win because we did a lot of good things and we put them under pressure, especially in the first half.
"That is how we scored the first two goals, we applied pressure, so I think we deserved to win ultimately.
"It was always going to be difficult because Shakhtar have a lot of good individuals who play as a team very well, and they have shown it in all the games they have played. The fact we went ahead twice and didn't quite hold on to the lead made it more difficult and we need to work on this, being able to see out games."
Di Matteo was not happy with the manner in which Chelsea conceded either of Willian's goals. "You look at the goals and we had a lot of players back so it is not like we were outnumbered," he said. "The first goal we had two players slipping and the second we had plenty of players in defence to deal with the cut back, but we need to work on our defensive organisation and that has to improve over time."
Juventus kept themselves right in the hunt with a 4-0 win over FC Nordsjaelland, and now lie just a point behind Chelsea and Shakhtar, with the Blues having to travel to Turin to face the Italian champions in their next game.
"We have a good chance to qualify because the last game will be crucial as well to Shakhtar and Juventus when they play each other," Di Matteo said. "We need to win the last game for sure and we need some points in Turin as well."
The Italian decided to leave captain John Terry on the bench, citing the Chelsea defender's lack of match fitness as the reason. "JT is a fantastic player and has many qualities and I am very happy that he is back available, but considering in the last four weeks he has had one competitive game I thought we needed players that were 100 percent match fit for a game like this," he said. "But we will certainly need him.
"We probably lacked a little experience in terms of we didn't have Frank Lampard or Ashley Cole available and JT didn't play, so there was a lot of Champions League experience that wasn't on the pitch.
"In normal circumstances you would like them to be with you but the players who played did tremendously given the enormous pressure we were under in this game. We knew we needed to win and it was difficult given the quality Shakhtar have and the way they play."
