It was a disappointing afternoon at Wembley for Frank Lampard’s young Blues. They faced a cup final defeat against city rivals Arsenal. Despite going ahead in the tie with a Christian Pulisic goal inside of five minutes. The Blues (Chelsea) lost control of the game as Mikel Arteta’s side started to dominate possession.
After a rare mistake by Chelsea captain, Cesar Azpilicueta on Gunners forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in their own box. This proved costly as the Gabon striker equalized from the spot. Azpilicueta left the pitch with a hamstring injury right after that. This was before Christian Pulisic also got substituted because of pulling a hamstring.
Chelsea’s Croatian midfielder Mateo Kovacic saw the second yellow card which has been a questionable decision. Things went bad to worse for Lampard’s side after Aubameyang scored the winner and Pedro went off with an injury of a dislocated shoulder. The Blues finished the game with nine men in a cup final where nothing went their way.
The Statement After The Games
“It is painful and a tough one to take. Obviously, when you lose a final, it is always painful. We started the game well and scored an early goal which normally gives the confidence to build on but we did not capitalize on it. Dropped our level a little bit and we were punished.”
“When you score an early goal, you have control of the game. We had a couple of chances after that to make it 2-0. It is a final and we knew that we were playing against a side that has good attacking players and they can be dangerous. After this, we couldn’t get into our game as we wished.”
Azpilicueta is one player at Chelsea who has rarely missed any game throughout his Chelsea career in his eight seasons in the club. The Spanish full-back has been involved in all the matches after the lockdown and it was unlucky for both clubs and the player to leave the pitch on the day of the cup final.
What He Went On To Say About Chelsea?
“It is my first time that it has happened and it hurts a lot when that happens in a final like today. Sometimes it is football and it is life but it is hard to take. Now we have to learn from the game, even if you always want to learn when you win and when you lift trophies rather than by losing these kinds of games. It is tough but we have the next challenges that we have to be ready for.”
“A lot of times there were 50/50s [that went in Arsenal’s favour] and we had the same in 2017 [when Anthony Taylor also took charge of a Chelsea-Arsenal final and sent off Victor Moses] but we have to look further than this.”
“We have to look at ourselves. We know two weeks ago when we played against Manchester United, we really controlled it. Played our game, we were on top of them against a very good side but today we couldn’t do it for 90 minutes and, in the end, that makes the difference.”
