Chelsea contrived to drop two points to Leeds United last night, two points that could prove quite costly in the race for the Champions League spots for next season when all is said and done. Thankfully, Manchester United then also proceeded to drop two points to West Ham, so the immediate damage isn’t too big and we stay fifth, for now. But given our schedule coming later this month and into the spring, we can hardly afford to give away cheap points.
The nature of the draw stings even more than the draw itself,
and it’s a feeling shared by everyone including head coach Liam Rosenior, who called it a “bitter pill to swallow”. That may be a tad dramatic for one random home game in the middle of a 38-game season, even if they were the first two dropped points of his Premier League tenure, but outside of a five-minute window, Chelsea dominated all phases of the game.
And it was only a once-in-a-lifetime miss by Cole Palmer in the 94th minute that prevented us from getting all three points anyway. Formulas for expected goals calculations differ, but the one I saw assigned that chance an xG of 0.87. Rosenior’s eye-xG metric gave it a 0.999.
“He’s in the position and 999 times out of 1000 he scores. It was just that one-in-a-thousand moment.
“I have to say, the last 20 minutes was wave after wave of attack. The lads’ energy, considering the amount of games that we played, the belief they show, we create chance after chance. It just didn’t quite go in, but we shouldn’t be in that position. When we lead at 2-0, the game should be done at home and there are certain things I can show the players, so we make sure that that can’t happen again.”
Palmer’s miss was just one of many moments that went against the Blues. Some of them, like poor refereeing or random bounces were out of our control. But some of them were very much self-inflicted problems. A couple poor decisions and moments of indecision cost us dearly in this one — as they’re always likely to do so at this level. The margins in the Premier League are smaller than ever, and there is no room for error, even when up by two goals.
“Two key moments in the game that we don’t take care of. We don’t stay calm. Moisés Caicedo is a magnificent player, he’s been top for me. We make a poor decision. Actually, how the play gets there as well. We make a few poor decisions in terms of how we press in that moment and we give away a penalty when, like genuinely, I can’t remember Leeds having a shot or a moment in the game. […] So the penalty goes in, they hit a few long balls, their energy’s up, they pick up a few second balls and then the lad handballs it. He handballs it, it affects my players in that moment. They think it’s a handball, we switch off, we don’t clear the ball, they score.
“[We] have to just make sure we take care of moments and be professional. I don’t think it’s about reacting to setbacks. You’re always going to have a spell in the game where you’re not on top. The ridiculous thing for us is that they’ve managed to score two goals in a five-minute period, when for the other 90 minutes of the game, we were by far the better team.”
Ah, football.
But as disappointed as Rosenior was in letting this lead slip, he’s happy to see the team moving in the right direction, in general.
“Some of our football, in possession, our press, our energy, was everything I wanted to see and that makes it even more of a bitter pill to swallow that we haven’t won the game. [But] anything can happen in football when you don’t take care of key moments. That’s why we watch the game.
“I hope people can see the progression already, considering we’ve [played], what is it, 10-11 games in 30 days. It’s a clear change and no disrespect to anything that’s happened before. There’s a change in the things I like to see, but what I really want to see is three points on the board every week.”
-Liam Rosenior; source: Football.London
Back to work.
