Three things we learned from Chelsea draw as Blues rue defensive errors and late Cole Palmer miss | OneFootball

Chelsea produced their best 45 minutes under Liam Rosenior, but ultimately it counts for little after second half collapse

Chelsea dropped points in the Premier League under Liam Rosenior for the very first time as they let a two-goal lead slip to draw 2-2 with relegation-threatened Leeds.

Goals from Joao Pedro and Cole Palmer either side of half-time had Chelsea 2-0 up and cruising, with the Blues having played some of their best football all season.

Yet a penalty conceded by Moises Caicedo was converted by Lukas Nmecha, and that got Leeds’s tails up.

Noah Okafor then levelled following a collective defensive howler from Chelsea, who were left to rue their own defensive errors and squandered chances late on as they were held at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea’s scintillating start

Even accounting for the absence of Reece James, who has been unwell, the team Rosenior put out will have excited Chelsea supporters.

Certainly, a front four of Joao Pedro, Estevao, Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez looked poised to pose very difficult questions to a Leeds team who have won away from home in the Premier League only once this season.

Estevao started on the right, with Fernandez and Palmer interchanging between the No10 position and the left pocket, and the off-the-movement and snappy passing between them served to bamboozle Leeds.

The goal came from an outstanding attacking move which culminated in Palmer feeding Joao Pedro and a confidently-dispatched dink over Karl Darlow giving Chelsea the lead.

Shortly after that came a sumptuous give-and-go between Brazilians Joao Pedro and Estevao which almost saw the former double his and Chelsea’s tally.

The passing was crisp and creative, but they only had one goal at the break. Palmer’s penalty made it two after the interval, yet even that two-goal cushion did not prove enough.

Chelsea let Leeds back in

If it was magnificent football that got Chelsea into the position of a 2-0 lead after 66 minutes, it was inexplicable how they then failed to close out a victory and claim all three points.

Instead, yet more points dropped from a winning position at Stamford Bridge, though the first of Rosenior’s reign.

The penalty Moises Caicedo conceded was clumsy and allowed Nmecha to halve the deficit. Then came Chelsea’s calamitous second shipped goal as a defensive mix-up involving three players left Noah Okafor able to roll into his own net.

Chelsea really struggled with Leeds's physicality after the Nmecha penalty, and that felt the biggest reason why the visitors were able to clamber all the way back.

Palmer passes up glorious chance to win it

Chelsea had won all of their previous four league games under Rosenior, and the most memorable was the West Ham match where from 2-0 down, Chelsea came back to 3-2 thanks to Enzo Fernandez’s injury-time winner.

Before the Argentine scored the winner in that game, though, Chelsea were piling on the pressure in search for a winning goal that felt it would come.

The same was true here, as the Blues were camped in the Leeds half from the 85th minute onwards. They looked as though they could well reclaim victory.

Cole Palmer could have won the game for Chelsea in stoppage time

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Yet from Jorrel Hato’s fine cross, Joao Pedro headed against the crossbar. And the most gilt-edged opportunity squandered belonged, of all people, to Palmer, who came tearing in at the back post to meet a powerful low Caicedo cross following a sublime flick by Joao Pedro.

Palmer looked for all the world as though he would win the game, but he blazed over the bar from a couple of yards out. As he stood in the goal, he was almost chuckling, bemused.

How had he missed? The points were shared, with Leeds fans left chanting: “Two nil and you f***ed it up”. It was hard to disagree.