Chelsea FC centre-back Gary Cahill hopes his side can draw strength from recent history when they look to overturn their 3-1 deficit at home against UEFA Champions League rivals Paris Saint-Germain next Tuesday.

The Blues recovered from a 3-1 first-leg reverse at SSC Napoli in the last 16 before going on to lift the trophy in 2012 and, as at the Parc des Princes, Ezequiel Lavezzi was their chief tormentor that night. Cahill believes that the Premier League giants "have the characters" to pull off another comeback, while team-mate Ramires, who will miss the decider through suspension, stressed the need "to keep our heads up".

Gary Cahill, Chelsea defender

It was a disastrous start. I've played for a long time now and I've been in that situation before where you go 1-0 down before you know it, for whatever reason, and you just have to try and regroup and get back in the game – and we did that. We got it back to 1-1 and controlled the first half after that. But I thought they had the second half, and the blow was at the end, with that late goal.

It's not impossible – we were in the same situation against Napoli when we won it, and we had to get the result at home. We're obviously strong at home, so we have the characters to do it, but it's going to be tough. We've got performances, especially at Stamford Bridge, and we need a huge one in the next leg. But we're disappointed, especially with the goal at the end – I thought it was soft.

Ramires, Chelsea midfielder

It's difficult, totally different. We need to score two goals to go through, but it's not impossible. Paris have a great team, but we will be playing at home in front of our fans. Unfortunately we lost, but we have to keep our heads up for the next match.

We can't say that [Paris] are better than [Napoli in 2011/12]. We played against Napoli and we won, and now we will have 90 more minutes to play against Paris. It's no use saying who is stronger; we have to show on the pitch that we deserve to win.

[On being suspended next week] What's more important is the fact that we'll be playing in front of our fans. Nothing is lost yet, we have to score two goals and we're averaging a good amount of goals at home, so we have what it takes to reach the next stage.

You can't say that our mistakes came from midfielders or from full-backs. We're a squad: when we win, we all win; when we lose, we all lose. It's important to have that mentality.

André Schürrle, Chelsea forward

It was a bad result for us – we'd hoped for better. The first half was good, but the second half was bad for us. It was very difficult and the third goal is a real blow. It's difficult to say [what went wrong] – we were too passive in the second half. We didn't really play and create chances. Paris played well, had a lot of possession and they deserved to win. Of course, it's still possible, we can still do it, but we need to create more chances and then who knows, maybe we'll pull it off.