Gary Neville spoke to Sky Sports after yesterday’s big Chelsea win over Middlesbrough.
Without being too harsh, he was certainly cautious in his praise of Chelsea, pointing out that the avalanche of goals “wasn’t from great play,” more from opportunism over the opposition’s mistakes.
You can see Neville’s thoughts in the clip embedded here:
We don’t want to be negative, but he has a point. Boro actually had the upper hand in the early stages, and it was only once we had scored we got into gear. They handed up some goals, and while it was superb to see Chelsea being clinical, we can’t convince ourselves that this was a performance as good as the scorline.
Bigger tests are ahead, including one in 48 hours against Aston Villa. If we play well again in that game, and against Liverpool next week, we can say for sure we’re on the right path.
Hey, you can only play the opponent in front of you! Boro were indeed miserable in many instances playing out of the back, but the important thing was we made them pay.
Personally, I thought the play of our outside backs was critical to making us a much more effective threat in the final third. Chilwell we knew would offer this threat provided his fitness didn’t hamper him, but Disasi was, for me, the revelation.
Missing both our first and second choice right backs, it was really important for Disasi to recognize that he needed to be far more aggressive getting forward than he has in the past when filling in at that position. And the first and second goals came as a direct result of his willingness to be brave and make runs into the box. While I don’t think he’ll be challenging James or Gusto for their spots once they return to full health, lol, I thought his performance boded well for our immediate future while we still must limp along without them.
It’s a fucking win. Neville is a total pessimist. Clinical or not we might be able to finally take advantage of others mistakes. Gosh sometimes you write garbage just to fill your quota.