Chelsea verdict: Blues still play better as underdogs and limp Arsenal defeat proves it

CHELSEA are proving again to be worse against weaker sides.

I remember discussing this recently with other Chelsea fans, but there is a reason why I feel more confident playing against the better sides right now as a Chelsea fan, and losing 1-0 to Arsenal tonight reiterates that fact. 

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It got to 75 minutes tonight, I looked at our players and they were jogging, some walking, but none of them actually running. 

You’d think, that being 1-0 down against Arsenal, their bitter rivals, with decent time left to play, there would be some real urgency and intensity from our players, right? But there was nothing. 

It pointed back to an age-old problem amongst this group of players that keeps occurring usually against the lesser sides - a mentality issue. 

Heads drop when things don’t go our way, and they fail to pick themselves up from it. 

Jorginho made a horrific error early on which lead to Arsenal’s goal, it really was a terrible back pass he didn’t even look up. 

But instead of brushing himself off and putting in the performance of his life to make up for it, he was poor and his head was not in it.  

This is a perfect example of what happens with this group of players, but as I touched upon, usually only against the lesser teams, and yes let’s face it, this Arsenal team are not great. 

They parked the bus the moment they were gifted a goal from Chelsea are they were happy to ride their luck for the rest of the match. 

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But Chelsea are off the back of just beating the Premier League champions Manchester City 2-1 in their own back yard, and knocking Real Madrid out of the Champions League with a 3-1 aggregate score line. 

They are two massive teams, two very good teams. 

But Chelsea were the underdogs in those games, and they always seem to be so much more comfortable when there is no pressure on them to win the game. 

Their intensity was so much higher, and they were well up for winning. 

Against Arsenal, they were expected to win the match, and that seemed to have a real negative effect on the player’s mentalities, and this ended up causing them to lose the match. 

Chelsea bossed the game in terms of possession, but they didn’t seem to be able to up the gears past gear three, and that was not enough. 

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