It’s an extra-special type of pain when losing to the bottom team in the Premier League, and that’s exactly what Chelsea fans experienced at the Stadium of Light on Sunday. After a penalty from Enzo Le Fée decided a 1-0 loss, I spent most of the game wondering if we’d make a comeback.
Yes, I’m going to take Jarred Gillett to task. Cole Palmer was sandwiched between Luke O’Nien and Noah Sadiki, and there was no penalty for the VAR to award, as the contact was deemed to be outside of the box. The penalty conceded by Levi Colwill looked like a shirt grab from both players, but it was only a Chelsea player who got punished. However, I don’t think blaming the ref is the answer here.
Looking at the stats, we had 69% of the ball, but we didn’t do much with it. Sunderland had 2.55 expected goals and we only had 0.53. This means we created almost five times less danger than Sunderland despite having more than two-thirds of the ball. In the first half, we only had three touches in the box. Most Sunday league strikers would have more touches than this.
We knew we were going to have problems. Romeo Lavia was sandwiched between our centre-backs, Jordan Henderson was sitting in front of him, and Cole Palmer was constantly coming deep to receive the ball. We had nobody to pull the tight Sunderland defence apart. Pedro Neto was playing as a false nine again and didn’t have a touch in the box.
To add to this, Brian Brobbey made a mockery of Colwill. He was stronger than him before the penalty. Chemsdine Talbi beat Marco Palestra twice in under 18 minutes. We were giving up our right-hand side to him. By half-time, Colwill was out and our best midfielder, Moises Caicedo, was playing as a centre-back. If this is our emergency plan, I can’t wait for January.
“We Need to Be More Precise and Patient”
Xabi Alonso gave a spot-on analysis after the game. He said: “We were not creating enough chances in the final third against the low block. We were not controlling and sustaining the attack there.”
He also admitted he hadn’t seen the incident involving Palmer, and said he hadn’t seen the Brobbey penalty back either, though he accepted that “in a few situations we didn’t do well” against the striker. I can’t argue with this, but it was a bit kind to Gillett.
I’m more concerned with the late substitutions. Estevao came on at half-time and was the most lively player in blue. Geovany Quenda forced a chance within two minutes of coming on at 79. Emmanuel Emegha came on in the 87th minute. Apparently, three minutes is more than enough time to turn the game around.
We have the international break to get Joao Pedro fit and come up with some ideas against deep teams. Sunderland had lost five of their last six games in the league. It should have been the easy game, but I’d quite like the next easy game to be easy.