Liam Rosenior in disagreement with Chelsea star after Brighton loss | Football | Sport

Chelsea manager Liam Rosenior and centre-back Trevoh Chalobah were in complete disagreement after their 3-0 defeat to Brighton. The Blues’ Premier League slump continued with a fifth successive defeat, Ferdi Kadioglu putting the Seagulls in front after just three minutes. Chelsea have now been beaten in seven of their last eight games across all competitions, leaving them with a massive task to qualify for the Champions League next season.

The Londoners’ losing streak leaves them eight points behind fifth-placed Liverpool. The Reds can stretch that gap to 11 points, with four games to go, in their game in hand against Crystal Palace this Saturday. Rosenior was absolutely furious after the defeat at Brighton, accusing his players of not putting in 100 per cent effort and labelling their performance “indefensible”. But he and Chalobah did not agree with what went wrong on the south coast after things turned ugly, with the away end aiming X-rated chants at their own manager, telling him exactly where to go.

Rosenior told Sky Sports in an angry interview: “By far, by far [that was the worst performance of the lot]. That was unacceptable in every aspect of the game. Unacceptable in attitude. I keep coming out and defending the players… that was indefensible, that performance tonight. The manner of the goals we conceded, the amount of duels that we lost, the lack of intensity in the team. Something has to change drastically right here, right now.”

“I can’t keep coming out here defending some of the things that we’re seeing. The general attitude, spirit, was lacking. The determination [was there] from three or four of the starting eleven. That’s nowhere near enough for this club. I can’t come out and lie. I’ll tell the truth. That was an unacceptable performance in every area.”

“That doesn’t represent anything that I want to see, and I won’t ever see it again. The performance in terms of professionalism wasn’t there. Some of the things I witnessed today, I never, ever want to ever see again. If you’re playing for this club, at this elite football club, or any football club, to be even accused of throwing the towel in is unacceptable. Yeah, that’s all I’m going to say. I’m hurting, I feel numb. That doesn’t represent me. That doesn’t represent the football club in anyway. That has to change.

“Chelsea represents fight and spirit and determination. That was lacking in every department this evening. But that team we put out today was far better than its engagement in the game. Every game between now and the end of the season is a huge game, and it needs to look like that in the way we play.”

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No team has run less distance per Premier League game this season than Chelsea (106.1km). That is drastically different to the leaders in that statistic, Manchester City, who are averaging 115.5km per match this season.

By complete contrast to Rosenior’s verdict, Chalobah felt that Chelsea produced their best possible efforts at the Amex Stadium. The defender said after his 43rd appearance of the season: “We gave our all. Just not the better side. I don’t know. We obviously had a game plan. We tried to execute it and… yeah. We tried our best. We worked on it throughout the week and obviously we got beat today. We’ve just got to go again and we can’t dwell on these moments.

“We’ve got to look forward to the next game. As players we have to be accountable for the performance. We know how much the fans have been behind us and we know they’re disappointed, we haven’t been winning at the moment. We have to stick together and pull through. I think personally the boys were running their socks off.

“You can see in the changing room everyone’s tired. It’s nothing to do with effort. We gave our all. We just got beat today. We ran today. You can say the stats this, the stats, I can see the boys are tired in that room. We just have to pick ourselves up and we’ve got a semi-final to come. It’s a massive game at Wembley.

“Us being in another semi-final, we have to use that as a positive and approach the game with a strong mentality and try and pick ourselves up from this defeat. We have to stay positive. Negativity is not going to help us. No matter what happens in life, we have to keep going forward and picking ourselves up.”

Chelsea will hope to snap their losing streak against Leeds United in the semi-finals of the FA Cup at Wembley on Sunday. Following that, the Blues’ final four Premier League games see them face Nottingham Forest (H), Liverpool (A), Tottenham (H) and Sunderland (A).