Chelsea slumped to a 1-0 defeat against Sunderland, the bottom side in the Premier League yesterday, to head into another international break on the back of yet another dispiriting defeat. It’s our third loss in our last four games in all competitions, after coming back out of the previous international break with such good form and energy.
In fairness, this latest defeat hinged on a couple penalty decisions. Either could’ve been given. Either could’ve been not given. As it was, the foul on Cole Palmer
was deemed to have occurred outside the penalty area by a few millimeters, while the action by Levi Colwill was deemed a foul despite the striker initiating most of the contact. Seen them given. Seen them not given. Them’s the breaks. (That said, the less said about referee Jarred Gillett’s overall performance, the better.)
The manager wasn’t interest in using the referee’s decisions as an excuse either, instead pointing the finger at both the defense and the attack.
“I’m not happy with how we defended that situation. Something that we could avoid, something that we had worked on during the week. And from that action, to give a penalty is not good for us. […] it was a situation that we could have defended better.”
“[…] but we didn’t produce enough to deserve to win. We were in the low block. We missed a bit of patience, a bit of quality, creativity on the last third to create more chances. You need to be more consistent. We didn’t do good enough.”
“[We] could have got better advantages in attack. But the game was really competitive. They were waiting for a chance. They got it after the lead. We were trying, but we were not producing much. The first goal was so important. Being behind, we didn’t produce enough.”
-Xabi Alonso; source: Football.London via AOL
Unfortunately, it’s not the first time we’ve seen this gameplan from Alonso fair spectacularly. The same exact thing happened against Spurs (one mistake at one end; nothing happening at the other) and one could argue the same thing was about to happen against Manchester United before they beat us to the punch of pressing the self-destruct button.
We can certainly blame the players for their lack of execution, but at the same time, we also have to question what they are tasked with executing. The lack of a recognized striker is not working; how much more evidence we need of that? A midfield of Caicedo-Lavia-Henderson gives us plenty of control, but little creativity going forward. If Wesley Fofana is our most incisive passer, maybe the problem is a bit more systemic than isolated to any one player.
Yesterday’s loss hinged on two penalty decisions because that’s all there was to the game. That cannot be allowed to happen in the first place. And that’s completely on us, the team.
Time to reflect, regroup, and get better — in every aspect.
