Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah has defended his team’s efforts within the defeat against Brighton despite scathing criticism from their head coach Liam Rosenior.
The Blues fell to a dismal 3-0 defeat on the AMEX on Tuesday night, their fifth Premier League defeat on the bounce having also didn’t rating in that period. It marks the club’s worst run of results since 1912.
Chelsea’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League next season are fading fast and so they could find themselves in the underside half of the table by the tip of the week should results elsewhere go against them.
Rosenior has defended his squad throughout a rotten run of results but finally took aim on the group after the ‘indefensible’ performance against the Seagulls, insisting only ‘three or 4’ of his players gave the whole lot.
Brighton players ran seven kilometres greater than their opponents on Tuesday – the most recent in a woeful trend with Chelsea sat 20th for distance covered per game within the Premier League this season, almost 10k in need of leaders Manchester City.
Despite those stats and Rosenior’s damning comments, Chalobah saw no issues with the trouble levels from his teammates.
Asked if Tuesday’s defeat was right down to the gameplan or its execution, Chalobah told Sky Sports: ‘We tried our greatest, we worked on it throughout the week but we got beat today and we’ve to go again.’
On Brighton repeatedly beating Chelsea to the punch, he continued: ‘I personally think the boys were running their socks off.
‘If you happen to look within the dressing room, everyone seems to be drained. It’s nothing to do with effort. We gave it our all. We got beat today.’
Pushed on stats showing Brighton outran them, Chalobah said: ‘We ran today. The stats are stats. I can see The boys are drained and we ran.’
Rosenior is under mounting pressure having only taken the reins at west London in January with players making their discontent known.
The previous Strasbourg boss suspended Enzo Fernandez for 2 matches for ‘crossing the road’ with a string of comments that placed his own future on the club unsure. Marc Cucurella avoided similar punishment after commenting Rosenior’s predecessor Enzo Maresca shouldn’t have left the club.’
The Chelsea boss insists nevertheless his relationship with the squad stays intact.
‘I don’t feel there’s a disconnect between me and the players. We work very closely with them in training, individual meetings, team meetings. We’re giving the whole lot to the players. There’s a scarcity of spirit, lack of belief.’
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