John Obi Mikel has accused Liam Rosenior of throwing players under the bus after his post-match comments, in which he blamed an anonymous individual for Chelsea dropping two points against Burnley.
Chelsea‘s draw with Burnley opened up the first kind of cracks under Liam Rosenior, as he was far from happy in his post-match press conference.
The Blues conceded late on when Zian Flemming found the back of the net with an unmarked header, which saw Chelsea drop even more points in the Premier League.
Liam Rosenior revealed after that a Chelsea player failed to mark Flemming, despite them being told before the match that he was their man.
This caused a bit of a stir amongst pundits and some Chelsea fans online, with John Obi Mikel taking offence.
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Reacting to the weekend’s draw on The Obi One podcast, it came to the attention of John Obi Mikel that Enzo Maresca also tried to throw someone under the bus for attention during his time at Chelsea.
“So if he’s saying again, it comes down to inexperience, what he said in his post-match interview, saying oh there’s a player that we assign to mark a player or to defend.
“No, that’s experience. A manager shouldn’t come out and say that. If you want to say that, go full on and say the whole thing. Call out whoever you want to call out. Don’t go half off. Say it because you started it. Finish it.
“It’s a bit like Enzo Maresca when he said, “Oh yeah, this has been my worst 24 hours, and the press says, can you elaborate?” No, I don’t want to elaborate. You’re starting it.
“If you have the balls to come out and say, have the balls to finish it.”
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What Liam Rosenior needs to do moving forward
By publicly highlighting a marking assignment failure after the Burnley draw without naming the culprit, he has inadvertently created a blame game culture that doesn’t help accountability. As Mikel rightly points out, a Chelsea manager shouldn’t go half-off. If you’re going to critique a professional at this level, you either do it behind closed doors to protect the group or you name the individual to set a standard.
He needs to transition from being a teacher of a project to a commander of a top-tier club. This means fixing Chelsea’s league-worst disciplinary record with strict internal consequences and ensuring that tactical assignments are so ingrained that there is no room for anonymous finger-pointing in the press.
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