Gary Neville fears the selfish actions of two Chelsea stars will see the club miss out on Champions League qualification.
Liam Rosenior’s side saw their hopes of a top five finish suffer an extra blow on Sunday when Manchester City left Stamford Bridge with three points following a swashbuckling second half display.
Goals from Nico O’Reilly, Marc Guehi and Jeremy Doku emphasised the chasm that currently exists between each teams as Chelsea struggled to become familiar with their rampant opponents.
The house side’s cause wasn’t helped by the absence of their skipper Enzo Fernandez who was sitting out the second game of a suspension imposed on him by his own employers for his outspoken comments over the course of the international break.
While Fernandez was forced to miss out, the club took a more lenient view of Marc Cucurella’s revelations but whatever the former Brighton full-back being let off the hook, Neville believes Rosenior being undermined in such an obvious way can only result in more unrest.
Neville told Sky Sports: ‘It’s a struggle and also you add to that the ill-discipline of Enzo Fernandez and Cucurella who’ve been speaking up in the previous couple of weeks.
‘As a football player in a dressing room what do the remainder of their teammates think.
‘While you speak like they’ve, that’s entirely selfish. It’s entirely selfish. It’s not helping your manager who’s young and inexperienced. It’s not helping your teammates. It’s not helping the fans because they’re considering you’re discontent.’
Chelsea have now lost five of their six games in all competitions with their only win in that run coming against League One strugglers Port Vale within the FA Cup and Neville condemned the actions of two senior players, particularly given the lower than ideal timing.
He said: ‘In a period when it’s good to knuckle down, you’ve just gone out the Champions League and been mauled by PSG, which isn’t any embarrassment they’re an excellent team. You needed everybody to knuckle down and stay in that mode of tightness.
‘While you’ve got the 2 experienced players that they’ve are demonstrating discontent and saying that the previous manager was good and we liked him and undecided why it modified. I agree there needed to be consequences.
‘What they’ve done is say it’s good to have the camera on you against Manchester City being within the stand with everyone knowing you’ve been ill-disciplined. That may’t be helpful.
‘The issue is those players are still entering into the dressing room having an influence and in the event that they’ve got a bottom lip down by their shoe and sulking and slagging the club off, I believe you’re going to have a difficult end to the season.
‘It feels to me now that Chelsea will miss out on Champions League football. I believe Chelsea are going to miss out due to what has happened over the previous couple of weeks.’
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