A 3-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain crowned **Chelsea**as world champions and had fans dreaming. But a draw with the Eagles is a bump back to earth, as the side could not succeed where **Liverpool**and Manchester City have failed against the South London outfit during the last three months.
Robert Sanchez saw the action between the sticks and spoke about the showing to the media.
‘I’m a bit disappointed’
The fight for Champions League football saw the defence tighten, but several key options were missing to start the season. Levi Colwill is out with an ACL injury, Tosin Adarabioyo was also absent with a knock, and Wesley Fofana watched from the bench so as not to rush him into action.
Trevoh Chalobah covered as the left central defender, while Josh Acheampong, who is only 19, made just his third Premier League start. They are a credit to Cobham and the defensive depth.
“We had a couple of weeks of pretty intense preseason training and unluckily we got a couple of injuries to very important players for us. I think the boys that have come into the team have shown up. Everybody is ready to play in this team, everybody has the quality, and we kept the clean sheet.”
The Blues have been riding the crest of a wave, battling to reach the top four of the Premier League and winning 4-1 in the Conference League final in May. A second title for the Todd Boehly regime arrived with the Club World Cup, and the team would have wanted to make a statement of intent.
“This is not the result we wanted. We wanted to start with a win, we wanted to carry on from the last couple of months which have been good. It hasn’t happened. We need to concentrate and carry on.”
They faced a disciplined, deep 5-2-3 block from the visitors. There was not much high pressure on the first phase of the buildup, but Cole Palmer was quiet as a central attacking midfielder, and the passages of play struggled to integrate the double pivot, forcing **Chelsea**to adapt their ideas.
“We’ve got quality on the ball and Palace hold the midfield. To play out was not difficult, but to find Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez in midfield was hard. We had to play a bit wide. The boys did what they had to do, created chances, and with different margins we could have scored one or two.”
There were chances for Chelsea. **Estevao**picked out a cross to the far post that was a little too high for Pedro Neto before he fired over the bar. Andrey Santos, his fellow Brazilian, blazed over the bar from a Marc Cucurella cutback in injury time, as the fine margins in the box went against them.
“It is a bit of both, happy and frustrated. I’m happy because I think the team created some chances, I think we played well and at the end of the day it was down to slim margins. I’m a bit disappointed.”
At the same time, Palace might have walked away with the three points. Cucurella clattered into Will Hughes at the start of the match and gave away a free kick that Eberechi Eze buried, only for the officials to chalk off the strike due to an infringement from Marc Guehi. Eze and Jean-Philippe Mateta made incisions on the counterattack, and there is some work to do to stabilise the midfield.
“We conceded a couple of chances where we could have been a bit stronger in 50-50s in the middle, that’s something we need to be careful with, but the boys created chances and we believe we could have scored a few. That’s football. We will take the clean sheet, the point, and go onto the next one.”