Chelsea coach Antonio Conte has explained why he had to bring on Victor Moses and two other substitutes with seven minutes remaining in his team’s 2-1 loss to Liverpool on Friday night.

Prior to the clash at Stamford Bridge, the Blues had netted nine times in the English top-flight, with five of those strikes coming in the last ten minutes.

“In the second half we started with the same players and you saw another game, with great intensity,” Conte told chelseafc.com.

“We scored the goal and created chances so for this reason I waited to make the substitutions. In the last 10 minutes I changed three players to try to give freshness and change the result.”

The Italian managed continued : “In that moment I had to decide whether or not to put two wingers in. I wanted to change a midfielder to put Fabregas on but it could have been Batshuayi and not either Moses or Pedro.

“I needed to put Hazard closer to Diego.”

Moses, 25, racked up his 50th Chelsea appearance against Liverpool, for whom he made 19 Premier League appearances during the 2013-2014 season.

Igho Kingsley