Liam Rosenior said Chelsea’s remarkable comeback from two goals down to beat West Ham 3-2 on Saturday demonstrated that his team possesses something “special”.
Rosenior’s side was trailing due to first-half goals from Jarrod Bowen and Crysencio Summerville at Stamford Bridge. However, Chelsea dismissed the half-time boos from their disgruntled fans, staging an impressive recovery after the interval. Joao Pedro narrowed the gap before Marc Cucurella scored the equaliser.
For the first time in the Premier League era, Chelsea overcame a two-goal half-time deficit to win, with their captain Fernandez scoring in stoppage-time.
“My biggest learning is there’s a spirit, a fight and a resilience in this group that I really, really like,” Rosenior said.
“We don’t have many training sessions, but we spoke about reacting positively to setbacks. All of that was there in the second half, which wasn’t there in the first half.”
“We’ve had so many games in a short space of time. I was fearful of a lack of energy and not energy or lack of application, but I felt our decision-making was really poor in the first half. When to keep the ball, when we pressed, we were just too far off it. West Ham were by far the better team. We had a reaction at half-time. The reaction in the second half tells me that we’ve got something really, really special here if I can utilise the squad in the correct way.”
Chelsea moved up to fourth in the Premier League as Rosenior became only the fourth English manager to win his first three Premier League games, following Bobby Gould, Sam Allardyce and Craig Shakespeare.
Rosenior has led Chelsea to six wins in seven matches across all competitions since taking over from Enzo Maresca after arriving from Strasbourg. The highlight of Rosenior’s tenure came on Wednesday when Chelsea came from behind to beat Napoli 3-2 in Italy, securing a place in the Champions League last 16. However, this win over West Ham might be even more impressive, given how Rosenior changed the game’s momentum after Chelsea’s poor first half.
Rosenior’s decision to make three half-time substitutions proved crucial as Chelsea surged back. “I thought individually, collectively, our first-half performance was nowhere near the level that it needed to be and should be,” he said.
“The individuals came off and then people will look at them. That wasn’t on them. It was a collective. There was a collective poor performance in the first half. Those players know with me, I make early changes. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden they’re out of my thoughts at all. It was just a really lethargic performance in the first half, but the second half was everything I wanted to see.”
(With AFP Inputs)
