Rosenior exposed as fraud amid Chelsea ‘madness’ as Neto pulls a Hazard on a ball boy | OneFootball

Liam Rosenior hit out at his Chelsea players for “15-20 minutes of madness” which saw them throw the game away against a brutally clinical PSG side. There’s a difference between saying you “take responsibility” and actually doing so.

Rosenior sprang something of a shock before the game by selecting Filip Jorgensen over Robert Sanchez, who’s played 13 games to his rival’s three under his charge, but was dropped for the 4-1 win over Aston Villa in the Premier League after another suspect display among many in the Spaniard’s Chelsea career, in the defeat to Arsenal.

“The way I work with goalkeepers, I don’t have an outright No.1,” Rosenior insisted when asked why Jorgensen came in for the Villa clash. “I want competition in every area.”

Sanchez was back in the team for the victory over Wrexham to further sully the No.1 waters, but Jorgensen’s return for PSG here suggests he is now – briefly, by the look of him – the man in possession, as fellow Dane Peter Schmeichel delighted in confirming to expose Rosenior’s happy-clappy hippie selection free-for-all as nonsense.

“My information, I’m told that Rosenior has directly told Jorgensen he is now the number 1 goalkeeper,” Schmeichel said. And for 74 minutes that vote of confidence looked to have done the 23-year-old some good.

He made a couple of smart saves to deny Ousmane Dembele and Bradley Barcola, showed excellent composure on a couple of occasions to dummy pressing PSG players and played some neat passes, too. But in this Champions League matchweek of goalkeeping gaffe one-upmanship featuring 17 minutes of Antonin Kinsky and then 90+ minutes of Gianluigi Donnarumma in Madrid, Jorgensen staked his claim for d*ck of the week by attempting a pass there was very obviously no angle for.

Barcola cut it out, the ball popped up and Vitinha lobbed the Chelsea goalkeeper at a point in the game when the visitors had reached a level of comfort not dissimilar to that which they experienced against the reigning European champions on their way to becoming Champions Of The World.

Chelsea had come from behind twice to level the game at 2-2, with Malo Gusto and then Enzo Fernandez responding to goals from Barcola and Dembele, and PSG looked short of ideas and energy before Jorgensen’s blunder handed the lead to Luis Enrique’s side on a plate and triggered a momentum shift in the tie that the Blues are now very unlikely to recover from.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia did a typical wriggle on the edge of the box before whipping a glorious shot with no backlift into the corner and then finished off a wonderful team goal featuring one-touch passing, a back heel on the touchline and an excellent cross from Achraf Hakimi.

Five PSG goals from an xG 0.83 is frankly unfair and there were several moments in the game that illustrated the knife edge it was balanced upon, not least Dembele scoring his goal roughly ten seconds after Cole Palmer had been denied by Matvei Safonov at the other end. But the clear difference at this very highest of all levels is the way in which mistakes are routinely punished.

Joe Cole insisted “it didn’t feel like a 5-2 game” and Owen Hargreaves said that “for a young team they showed real courage”. But at some stage, which might even have passed already in the minds of many Chelsea fans, the youth excuse isn’t going to fly.

Jorgensen’s error will make the headlines but Barcola shouldn’t have been allowed so much space for the opener, they left themselves far too open to the counter-attack for Dembele’s goal, Reece James gave the ball away for the fourth and Rosenior should take his fair share of the blame for that goal and the fifth.

Confusion replaced calm for Chelsea after he brought Romeo Lavia and Liam Delap on for Palmer and Joao Pedro to hold on at 3-2 and then Alejandro Garnacho on for Gusto to chase the game at 4-2. It created a situation where the Blues players didn’t look as though they knew if they should be defending or attacking and were caught in the middle against a PSG side that smelt blood amid the doubt in that last ten minutes and took full advantage.

The frustration felt by all the Chelsea players was exhibited by Fernandez when he was seen “having a real go” at Jorgensen for another lax pass in the latter stages and by Pedro Neto, who “didn’t quite pull an Eden Hazard on Charlie Morgan” at Swansea but did shove a ball boy to the ground before he “apologised like 35 times”.

Rosenior “didn’t see it” just as he doesn’t see any moments of controversy but did insist that in the second leg “we need to put it right after 15 to 20 minutes of madness.”

But there’s a difference between saying you “take responsibility” for your players as he did once again and actually doing so. He should have fessed up to his contribution to the madness, and as he will continue to insist of his players, “not make the same mistake twice”.