Didier Drogba: Chelsea's youngsters need time to adapt

Didier Drogba says Chelsea have lost confidence after their recent run of defeats and that the squad's younger players still need time to adapt to the pace of the Premier League. " When you don't win games, you lose confidence," the Chelsea striker told Sports Illustrated . "That's normal. The only way to get back your confidence and be able to say that we can still win the league would be to win two or three consecutive games and then see how we feel and say, yes, maybe it's possible or it is not." The Ivorian, who has scored nine goals this season, pointed towards the changes in the squad over the summer as a potential factor behind Chelsea's struggles of late. "We've had a lot of injured players, and the team has changed from last year," he said. "We lost five great players in [Michael] Ballack, [Juliano] Belletti, Deco, [Ricardo] Carvalho and Joe Cole. And we replaced them with young players like [Jeffrey] Bruma, [Gaël] Kakuta, [Josh] McEachran and [Patrick] van Aanholt. They are good players, but they need time to adapt." The striker endured a spell out of the side earlier this season after suffering a bout of malaria. "It was really bad, so bad that it lasted two months," he said. "I lost fitness, but I was working hard and trying to help the team. For me to be playing now, it's already a good start because it was a difficult moment for me to have malaria." Drogba, though, is confident of his side's ability to bounce back. "We have to think about winning two consecutive games," he said. "That's being realistic, and it shows how bad we've been doing for the last month and a half. It's something that has to change, and I think we're not far [from that]. It's going to come back. Not that I'm not worried. But now everybody is coming back from injuries, so it is going to help us a lot."