Chelsea striker Diego Costa has said he wanted to leave the club in the summer.<\/p>\n
Costa joined the Blues for \u00a332m in 2014, and was understood to be close to a return to former club Atletico Madrid after a difficult 2015-16 campaign.<\/p>\n
The Spain international has since scored 14 Premier League goals, as Chelsea have taken a six-point lead courtesy of 13 successive victories.<\/p>\n
“Did I want to go? Yes, yes, I was about to leave. But not because of Chelsea,” said the 28-year-old.<\/p>\n
“There was one thing I wanted to change for family reasons but it wasn’t to be, and I continue to be happy here.”<\/p>\n
Costa scored 20 goals in his first season in England, as Chelsea won the Premier League title under Jose Mourinho.<\/p>\n
But he had netted only four more by the time Mourinho was sacked in December 2015, finishing the season with 12 before being heavily linked with a move.<\/p>\n
Brazil-born Costa says he has also made a conscious effort to curb his aggressive nature on the pitch.<\/p>\n
“I knew I had to improve that aspect because here in the Premier League there is no mercy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“A lot of the time it seemed [referees] were against me. If they’re not going to change, I had to change.”<\/p>\n
Chelsea return to action against London rivals Tottenham on Wednesday (20:00 GMT).<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea striker Diego Costa has said he wanted to leave the club in the summer. Costa joined the Blues for \u00a332m in 2014, and was understood to be close to a return to former club Atletico Madrid after a difficult 2015-16 campaign. The Spain international has since scored 14 Premier League goals, as Chelsea have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[2454,564,2455],"class_list":["post-281153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","tag-chelsea-striker","tag-citi-sports","tag-diego-costa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}