Chelsea interim manager Calum McFarlane does not agree that his players have downed tools despite their run of six successive league losses which has made their hopes of Champions League football next season all but disappear.
McFarlane, back for a second spell on the bench this season after the sacking of Liam Rosenior, started with an FA Cup semi-final win over Leeds United before Chelsea slipped back into old habits with a 3-1 home defeat by Nottingham Forest on Monday.
This is Chelsea’s worst run of league games since 1993, and at Thursday’s press conference ahead of Saturday’s away match at Liverpool, McFarlane was asked if his players had stopped trying.
“I would not agree with that,” he replied.
“The performances haven’t been good enough. We are in a really bad run at the moment. The Leeds performance was a glimmer where we thought we could build on that but we weren’t able to do that.
“I see these boys every day, every training session, every meeting and in the gym. They are in a good place to go and attack games, we just haven’t been able to translate that to the game on Monday so hopefully we can improve that on Saturday.”
Chelsea have the FA Cup final against Manchester City to look forward to, one week after the Liverpool game, but McFarlane is not looking that far ahead.
“We have not spoken about the Cup final,” McFarlane said.
“We have spoken about what we have to improve on the previous game and looking ahead to the next game.
“We want to turn it around. We know the standards this club has set, we aren’t meeting them at the moment.”
Chelsea are ninth in the league standings on 48 points, and their slim chance of a Champions League place rests on Aston Villa winning the Europa League and finishing fifth in the Premier League.
That scenario would give the side finishing sixth a place in Europe’s premier club competition, and Chelsea are four points off sixth-placed Bournemouth with three matches left.-Reuters
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