So this is what can happen when we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot!
The stats have shown that not only are Chelsea the best team in the Premier League in terms of xG generated, but we are one of the very best, full stop …but only at full strength, 11-v-11. So as long as we can keep all players on the pitch and not continue in our quest to set a new Premier League record for number of red cards received in a season, we might be fine, right?
If tonight is any indication, that is indeed quite right.
The Blues suffered an early setback thanks to clever little flick from Douglas Luiz, but we would be able to not only overcome that but eventually turn in a complete team performance, perhaps the best yet under Liam Rosenior. Sure, there was some luck about things, as there always is. But that cuts both ways. Ollie Watkins may have been offside by a hair but Reece James was also fouled quite clearly in the area and should’ve had a penalty.
At the end of the day, we played well enough to not have to rely on luck, and that’s the hallmark of any good team. (Doing that consistently is then the hallmark of any great team; we’ll get there, too, maybe.)
Many of us probably feared the worst when Villa scored first. I know I did. But this team, which had dropped points against the likes of Burnley and Leeds United before getting manhandled (literally) by Arsenal … this team showed the sort of resilience and response that we can all be very proud of, including the head coach.
“It’s a really good evening [and] I was very proud of them today. […] We spoke about responding positively before the game [and] for the players to perform in the manner that they did, with and without the ball, makes me a very proud manager this evening. […] I just thought it was an outstanding team performance.”
“You’re going to have setbacks in your season, whether that’s dropping points, whether that’s losing games that you shouldn’t, whereas conceding the first goal. The maturity of the team, the quality that we played with, it can be better, for sure. But in terms of the spirit and what you want to see in a team, I was really, really pleased with that tonight.”
Of course, now we have to work on that whole consistency thing again. The next three games are in three different competitions, and they’re all massive in their own way. How we perform in them will go a long way towards defining the season at the end.
“It’s only significant if we back it up. We have to be consistent. We have a massive FA Cup game, then we’ve got a huge game in Paris, and then we’ve got another huge game against Newcastle. We just need to back it up and not look at the significance of the games. We just need to perform, and if we perform at that level, we’re going to be in a good place.”
-Liam Rosenior; source: Football.London
Let’s go!
