Delap managed to get two yellow cards off the benchplaceholder image
Delap managed to get two yellow cards off the bench | Getty Images
Chelsea must be careful how they deal with Liam Delap after recent mistakes with another player.
Enzo Maresca’s men took a commanding three-goal lead, but Wolves came back to 3-2 ahead of Liam Delap getting sent off upon his return. Jamie Gittens then scored a wonder-goal to kill off the game, but Chelsea still found time to concede again, with David Moller Wolfe scoring his second in stoppage time to round off a 4-3 result.
The game frustrated Maresca, who saw his team perform poorly defensively, and it will have taken Chelsea back to memories of the past when Delap was sent off for a second yellow card. The forward came off the bench but still managed to get two yellow cards, and the second was a very silly booking.
Delap left an elbow in, jumping into a challenge late, and Maresca will be very disappointed with the forward, particularly with Chelsea trying to see out the game at that point.
And it takes Chelsea back to last season when Nicolas Jackson was sent off late in the season, against Newcastle United. Jackson was slammed for that red card, and indeed the dismissal that followed during the Club World Cup.
Jackson was over-criticised for those red cards. Were they irresponsible? Yes. But you get that with young players, and that’s something this Delap red card should teach Chelsea. Sometimes, young players do dumb things, and that is part of their learning process.
The notion that Jackson was some ill-disciplined player was ridiculous. Equally, the same should be applied fo Delap, who will learn from this error, especially given the difficulty of it, returning from a long injury lay-off n the worst possible way.
If you are going to put trust in young players, you have to offer some grace as they go through the bumps in the road. That means not placing premature labels on them, and not buying into the labels the media place upon them, as Chelsea did with Jackson.
Maresca on the win
Speaking after the win over Wolves, Maresca said: “I am very happy with the first half, and very upset with the second half, In the first half, we were very good. It’s always complicated to go away and score three goals. We were playing nice football, creating chances. We didn’t concede anything. The game was completely under control at 3-0.
“Second half we were not doing the right things. The first goal we conceded opened the game and gave them a boost and the energy to come back into the game. We panicked a little bit. We could have avoided all three of the goals we conceded. But it’s part of the journey of this team, this squad, to gain experience to get better and better.”
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