Chelsea FC continue their unprecedented decline in Brighton. Coach Liam Rosenior attacks his team afterwards, the fans do it to him. Will he still be in charge at the weekend?
These two words would have been enough to put Liam Rosenior’s mood into perspective on Tuesday night. When Chelsea’s coach was asked if it was the darkest day of his tenure so far, he replied: “By far”.
After the 3-0 defeat at Brighton, the Blues have now lost five league games in a row for the first time since 1912, and the collapse in recent weeks is unprecedented. Something seems to have broken at Stamford Bridge following the crushing Champions League exit against Paris Saint-Germain (2:5/0:3), as the turmoil surrounding Enzo Fernandez showed. “Fuck off”, chanted the Chelsea fans in Brighton in the direction of Rosenior.
“Something has to change fundamentally here – immediately”
And Rosenior passed on the anger to his team almost unfiltered. “That was unacceptable in every respect, unacceptable in terms of attitude,” railed the coach, who had always publicly defended his players. “I’m numb, I’m so angry. Something has to change fundamentally here – immediately.”
It is not impossible that the club bosses around co-owner Behdad Eghbali, who was present in Brighton, see it the same way. Will the Rosenior project, which is contractually set to run until 2032, become an interlude of less than four months? Although the Premier League can once again enter the top five in the table for the Champions League, the Blues will hardly be in with at least seven points behind them. And on Sunday, they will play against in-form Leeds United in the FA Cup semi-final for their last chance at the title this season.
In this mixed situation, Rosenior opted for something that his team now only shows sporadically: he defended forwards. “There is a lack of team spirit and self-confidence,” he diagnosed. “I can’t defend this performance. It doesn’t represent this soccer club, it doesn’t represent anything of what I demand from the team, and that has to change. The professionalism was not there.”
A maximum of “three or four players” had shown the necessary attitude. “Whether you play for this top club or any other soccer club, just being accused of throwing in the towel is unacceptable. That’s all I’m going to say about it. I am deeply hurt.”
A coach who attacks his team, some of whom are still publicly mourning his predecessor: less than a year after winning the Club World Cup, Chelsea FC is exactly the chaotic club that some people have long seen it to be in view of its crazy transfer policy.
