Cesar Azpilicueta has offered a damning statement on Chelsea’s season by insisting: “Our place is not to be sixth in the Premier League”.
The experienced defender didn’t hold back as he insisted the London club can not afford to concentrate all their efforts on trying to win the Europa League.
Chelsea have dropped five points in their last two games…and yet should have won both comfortably. It means they are outside the Champions’ League places instead of being third, ahead even of Spurs in the Premier League table.
And the Spanish star said it simply isn’t good enough. “I don’t see just the Europa League as the only way of being in the Champions League because Chelsea’s place is not to be sixth in the Premier League so I cannot accept this.
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“The Europa League is a way of going into the Champions League, it is a trophy, and we will play until the end but we are not in a position in the league where you can say we are not going to reach the Champions League spots.
“It is our job to do it because we could be talking about something different today.
“If we had won the last two games we would be third going into the international break and we could have said we were already in the Champions League. Obviously with five more points we could have been much better.”
Chelsea dominated in the first half at Goodison on Sunday, but couldn’t find the killer punch and were then blown away by a rejuvenated Everton after the break.
It once again exposed a weakness in the mentality of the Maurizio Sarri’s team, and Azpilicueta admitted that the numbers are not good enough. Only once this season have they come from behind to win, and he said:
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“The reality is that the numbers are there. From 30 games only one we came back (from behind to win) in the Premier League.
“It is frustrating. It is not the first game where we played very well in the first half and we didn’t kill the game and then in the second half are in trouble from the first minute.
“It is difficult to understand how we cannot keep the consistency during the game and in the season as well. We have had a couple of good results but we’ve had bad results and obviously that scenario puts you in a more difficult position?”
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The defender also refused to blame fatigue as an excuse either, despite the far flung travels of the Europa League, and he told his team-mates it’s just not good enough:
“We are professionals and we can play every three days. Every team and every player in the world wants to play as much as possible and go far in every competition. I don’t think this is the main concern.”
