Rosenior: ‘You have to keep banging on the door’

Despite being dominant on the pitch and on the statsheet, Chelsea were approaching the final ten minutes of the match against Pafos FC last night without anything to show for our efforts. The prior 80 minutes or so had elapsed almost entirely as an attack-versus-defense exercise, with the Blues having nearly all of the ball, amassing 20 shots, and generating almost 2.0 xG — all to no avail.

Thankfully, the breakthrough would arrive in the 78th minute, fittingly from a set piece rather than all of our ultimately fruitless open play, with Moisés Caicedo flinging himself at a ball that was flicked on at the near post. Corners are all about execution and desire, and we reaped the reward of three points from this necessary evil of the modern game.

It hardly made for an exciting, or even entertaining watch, but head coach Liam Rosenior spoke positively of his players’ determination to keep going and keep trying — especially after what looked like a perfectly legitimate goal by Enzo Fernández early on was ruled out for a supposed push.

“You have to keep banging on the door. Obviously, you want to get the breakthrough earlier to open up the game. That was a harsh decision on Enzo. Maybe puts his hands on him [for the disallowed goal]. I think in the Premier League, it’s probably a goal.

“But the players, sometimes you just have to keep going. You have to keep knocking on the door, but you also have to keep the back door shut. There were things I was pleased with. There were things that we need to improve on. But overall, the body language of the group, they kept going. They were making block after block and save after save. I was delighted for Moi to get the goal and get the result we deserved.”

Pafos’s goalkeeper finished with six saves, some of them quite excellent, while their defense blocked another seven, quite a few of which were of the desperate last-ditch variety. There’s a reason they’ve only conceded ten goals in the seven league-phase games, and just five in the six against teams not named Bayern Munich. That’s not to say that we should be proud or happy about our one solitary goal, but at least we got the all-important win, which guarantees us a place in the knockout rounds and keeps us in with a good chance of a top-eight finish and first-round bye if we win in Naples next week.

And we got to rotate a bit, too, with Cole Palmer getting the day off to deal with a knock and Reece James needed only for the first 45 minutes.

“Of course, you always want to score more goals. You always want to win by bigger margins. But the reality of our situation is now we’re in the top eight. If we win, we have a fantastic chance to go through. We have a very difficult game against Crystal Palace on Sunday that we need to prepare for. And then we’ll assess that game and how we go about it next Wednesday.”

“[We] know it will be a difficult game. Antonio [Conte] is an incredible coach. But yeah, I’m not daunted by that prospect at all. They have to win, which changes the dynamic of the game a little bit. But my focus now is on Crystal Palace. Honestly, I’ve spoken to the players about how important the next game is. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

-Liam Rosenior; source: Football.London

So it’s three wins for Rosenior from his first four games, plus a slightly unfortunate defeat to Arsenal in the League Cup. We may not look all that different on the pitch (if at all), but he’s brought in a fresh attitude and a renewed sense of winning purpose. Certainly not a bad start, overall.