Online Reporter
CHELSEA and Liam Rosenior ran out of excuses. And the Blues are simply not running enough.
On Tuesday night at Brighton, Chelsea players covered less distance than their opponents. For the 34th time in 34 Premier League games this season.
Defender Trevoh Chalobah claimed after the match: “I thought personally that the boys were running their socks off. You can say the stats this the stats that, but I can see the boys are tired.
“We gave it our all, we just got beat today.”
But Chalobah was fooling no one. Especially not Rosenior, who lashed out at his players in one last desperate throw of the dice before he was sacked.
You could dismiss the statistic of Chelsea being outrun if it was a rare occurrence. When it happens in every single game, it is a disease.Yes, the Blues under Rosenior and predecessor Enzo Maresca played a patient, high-possession style of football which should require less running.
Yes, the demands of playing in the Club World Cup last summer have undoubtedly had an effect on the fitness and energy of the squad.
But when one of Chelsea’s best players Moises Caicedo simply cannot be bothered to sprint back to try to prevent Jack Hinshelwood scoring Brighton’s crucial second goal, there are no excuses.
All the talent in the world means nothing if you do not do the hard yards. The Blues have spent all the money in the world — more than £1.2billion — assembling a squad that is not doing the basics.
If Chelsea’s players would not listen to Rosenior or anyone else at the club, maybe they should consider the assessment of Brighton’s Pascal Gross.
The German midfielder was talking about the qualities which have sent Fabian Hurzeler’s side leapfrogging Chelsea into sixth place.
Gross said: “We always have talent, but you need more than talent in the Premier League – you can see that on different occasions.
“You need talent plus mentality, plus togetherness, plus you really want to fight for each other.
“If someone is outplayed, everyone sprints back to help his team-mate. We have that at the moment and we’re really hard to beat. Then, talented moments will come out always.
“But it doesn’t work the other way around, you cannot show your talent without all the basics in the football game. That’s what we’re doing really well at the moment.”
And what Chelsea are not doing. At all. Rosenior still has a lot of friends at Brighton after finishing his career as a player there and going into coaching.He and Gross crossed paths after the midfielder joined the Seagulls in 2017, ahead of their first season back in the English top flight.The Germany international, who returned for a second spell at the Amex in January, hugged Rosenior warmly after the game.
Gross said: “I played with him when I arrived here and he helped me so much at the beginning.
“He made me feel comfortable, he was a senior player at that time — what I am now!
“He was trying to help a guy coming from abroad get to know everything and that was very appreciated by me.“He’s such a good man with a nice heart, I can speak about the human being.
“I just wish him all the best. It’s not easy, the Premier League, but I think he’ll be fine.”
Gross was speaking before Rosenior was axed just 107 days into a six-and-a-half year deal, leaving with a £4million payoff.
The 34 year old should give Chelsea chiefs plenty of food for thought. Not least co-sporting director Paul Winstanley, who was Brighton’s head of scouting when Gross moved to the South Coast club.Three more players from Winstanley’s time at the Amex were in the Chelsea team beaten there on Tuesday — goalkeeper Robert Sanchez, left-back Marc Cucurella and midfielder Caicedo, signed for a combined total of more than £200m.
Add the injured Joao Pedro, who joined the Blues from Brighton in a deal worth up to £60m last summer, and Stamford Bridge chiefs have spent over a quarter of a billion on acquiring Seagulls talent.
And that is before the millions spent on hiring then firing Brighton boss Graham Potter and his backroom team, plus Winstanley, back in 2022.
Yet Hurzeler, the only Premier League manager younger than Rosenior, and his team are a far better bet to qualify for European football than Chelsea.5. The Blues have more talent on paper, fielding a team worth nearly £600m on Tuesday.
But games are not won on paper or balance sheets. They are won on the grass by players who are prepared, as Chalobah might say, to run their socks off .—Sun.
