A Chelsea player has publicly defended his team-mates despite Liam Rosenior branding the side’s performance “unacceptable”, while also questioning the players’ attitude after the Blues’ 3–0 defeat away at Brighton.
On Tuesday (April 21), a dominant Brighton side handed Chelsea their fifth defeat in a row without scoring — something that had not previously occurred in 114 years.
Ferdi Kadioglu opened the scoring after three minutes, setting the tone for the half as the away side struggled to deal with the Seagulls' dominance in every area of the pitch.
Jack Hinshelwood doubled Fabian Hürzeler’s side’s lead just before the hour mark to make it 2–0, before substitute Danny Welbeck rounded off a comfortable victory with a third in second-half stoppage time.
Advert
Angry chants could be heard from the away end, with reports claiming that “F*** off Rosenior” was sung by some of the furious travelling fans.
The result saw Chelsea drop to seventh — seven points behind the Champions League places — while Brighton moved up to sixth.
Speaking after the match, Rosenior slammed his players, describing their performance as “unacceptable” and “indefensible”.
“It was unacceptable in every aspect of the game, unacceptable in our attitude,” said Rosenior.
“I keep coming out and defending the players — that’s indefensible, that performance tonight.
“The manner of the goals we conceded, the number of duels that we lost, the lack of intensity in the team — something needs to change drastically right now.
“I think the players need to have a look in the mirror at what they put in. You can talk about tactics… tactics come after the basics.
“Having more courage to play, winning duels, winning headers, tackles, conceding terrible goals — that was an unacceptable performance tonight.”
The Englishman then went on to say that he believes there is a “lack of spirit and lack of belief” in the current squad.
Chelsea star disagrees with Liam Rosenior
Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah appeared to disagree with his manager when speaking to Sky Sports after the defeat.
The defender said: “We gave our all. Just not the better side. I don’t know. We obviously had a game plan. We tried to execute it and… yeah. We tried our best. We worked on it throughout the week and obviously we got beat today. We’ve just got to go again and we can’t dwell on these moments.
“We’ve got to look forward to the next game. As players, we have to be accountable for the performance. We know how much the fans have been behind us and we know they’re disappointed — we haven’t been winning at the moment. We have to stick together and pull through. I think, personally, the boys were running their socks off.
“You can see in the changing room everyone’s tired. It’s nothing to do with effort. We gave our all. We just got beat today. We ran today. You can say the stats this, the stats that — I can see the boys are tired in that room. We just have to pick ourselves up and we’ve got a semi-final to come. It’s a massive game at Wembley.
“Us being in another semi-final, we have to use that as a positive and approach the game with a strong mentality and try to pick ourselves up from this defeat. We have to stay positive. Negativity is not going to help us. No matter what happens in life, we have to keep going forward and picking ourselves up.”
Chelsea return to action against Leeds United in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley on Sunday (April 26).
Topics: Chelsea, Premier League, Football, Trevoh Chalobah, FA Cup
Luke Davies