Post-match reaction from the boss
Since coming in, Liam Rosenior made it a point to not try to change too many things tactically from what Enzo Maresca had been doing with Chelsea. The new head coach spoke in reverence of Maresca’s setup, which aligned with the BlueCo principles that Rosenior himself had been aligning to at RC Strasbourg.
And seeing as how Chelsea have had a game every three days or so for as long as we can remember, it’s not like Rosenior really got a chance to really work on anything too drastically different. So the new man in charge had been focusing on the mental and motivation aspects of the job, showing fresh, brash confidence and preaching ambition and winning mentality — things we sure love to hear!
Last night, Rosenior tried something a bit different.
It crashed and burned.
“I wanted to go man-for-man all over the pitch. We knew we needed to win the game. I wanted to be really aggressive and Napoli were very clever after 20-25 minutes. I felt we won the ball back very high in good areas in the first 20 minutes. When they started to miss our press out and went a little bit more direct, the distances were a little bit bigger. We corrected that. We were still man-to-man in the second half but we started a bit deeper with our press and I think that helped our compactness.”
Chelsea, set up in a most awkward three-man defense, were perhaps lucky to be behind only 2-1 at the half, with Napoli repeatedly slicing open the team — not sending anyone to hospital unlike their ultras the night before, but certainly sending Rosenior scrambling for a rethink at the break.
To his credit, the young head coach made the necessary adjustments. Chelsea were much improved in the second half, and though both of our two goals needed individual brilliance from João Pedro (certainly his first, our second), by controlling the game instead of constantly scrambling for our lives, we were able to provide the platform for our center forward to shine.
“I’m so proud of [the players], even in the first half, I’m asking them to press in a completely different way that they’ve never done before and hardly had any practice at. So that time over the next few weeks will help us get better and improve, but we still need to win games in this moment.”
“[There were] so many pleasing individual performances but I think the most pleasing aspect was the collective mentality of the group to have a positive reaction to a difficult first half.”
-Liam Rosenior; source: Football.London
Rosenior got it wrong at the start — right intention to go for the win, but wrong approach — but he got everything right after that. His in-game adjustments and substitutions helped us win the game. We’re still just getting to know him, but it’s great to see that he can evaluate his own choices correctly. Not every coach can, certainly not in real-time.
This was a big win, an important win, but just one win. Next up: another important win-opportunity as West Ham come to town Saturday evening.
Category: General Sports
