Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti has no regrets letting several senior players depart last summer.
Ancelotti was asked if he regretted allowing senior players to leave last summer, when he has had to cope with a reduced squad size for much of the campaign.
"No," he said, "because when we decided to change the philosophy and put in more young players I agreed, so until November we used the young players in some games and we improved their experience. [Michael] Ballack and the other players gave us fantastic support last season but I think it was the time in the summer to change and put in more young players from the Academy.
"Maybe sometimes when I changed the shape to play more defensively in some periods of the season we lost a little bit of possession, control of the game. That was our choice to play more defensively, because sometimes our possession was not so efficient and I wanted to change the shape to use more counter-attack.
"I changed sometimes the shape with 4-4-2 sometimes, sometimes back to 4-3-3, but last year the identity was very clear, this season was a little bit different."
