Pressure mounts on Liam Rosenior as Chelsea season hits new nadir

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Evening Standard

·22 April 2026

Pressure mounts on Liam Rosenior as Chelsea season hits new nadir

Blues boss fighting to save his job a little over three months into a five-and-a-half-year contract

Defeat at the Amex, Chelsea’s seventh in eight games, has all but ended the club’s hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

It leaves Rosenior fighting to save his job a little over three months into a five-and-a-half-year contract.

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Rosenior’s tenure started strongly January, but Chelsea’s form has since fallen off a cliff.

A 5-2 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in their Champions League last-16 first leg last month was the start of an alarming collapse, with Chelsea now having lost five consecutive Premier League games without scoring for the first time since November 1912, seven months after the Titanic sank.

Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali and co-sporting director Paul Winstanley were among the club hierarchy in attendance at the Amex on Tuesday night as fans turned on the head coach and unfurled a banner calling for BlueCo to leave the club.

Liam Rosenior is under mounting pressure

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The defeat came just three days after a 1-0 loss to Manchester United that was preceded by a protest against the BlueCo consortium’s running of Chelsea. The protest took place near Stamford Bridge and more than 500 supporters were involved.

Rosenior, who has the lowest win rate of any permanent Chelsea head coach this millennium, slammed his players in his post-match media duties after the Brighton game, criticising them for losing “80 per cent of duels” and lacking “spirit” in a performance that he deemed “indefensible” and “unacceptable”.

It was the first time in his reign of more than three months that he has publicly criticised players for a lack of application, and prompted a defence of his team-mates from Trevoh Chalobah.

Chelsea are next in action on Sunday as they take on Leeds in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

The Blues will look to keep their season alive with a victory, which will secure a first FA Cup final in four years, where they will face the winners between Manchester City and Southampton.