Malo Gusto did not mince words after Chelsea\u2019s Carabao Cup tie at Lincoln City, describing the Blues\u2019 opening 45 minutes as substandard and saying the League One opponents \u201cbullied\u201d the world champions. The defender singled out the first half at the LNER Stadium as the low point of a match in which Chelsea controlled possession but failed to convert it into meaningful threat.<\/p>\n
The Italian manager was quick to criticise his team\u2019s first-half display against Lincoln after the full-time whistle. Chelsea had 78% possession before the break but managed just three shots to their opponents\u2019 nine, with none of Chelsea\u2019s efforts on target.<\/p>\n
Gusto was similarly blunt in his assessment, calling the opening period \u201creally bad.\u201d \u201cOf course, in the first half we played like kids,\u201d said the Frenchman. \u201cThey bullied us in every part of the pitch. It was really bad for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second half was important to come back with more desire, more confidence. It is important for the team to keep building these kinds of things to become better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew they were going to play like this. It was their qualities, so they played with that. We were aware before of that. It was the game. The game was about duels, fighting. That is why we tried to do more in the second half to show our desire to win, and that is what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chelsea exit the competition this season and will reflect on a performance that continued a sequence of disappointing displays. The defeat follows an uninspiring draw with Brentford, a heavy loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League and last weekend\u2019s collapse against Manchester United. Last season Chelsea were knocked out in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup and the club will face Wolverhampton Wanderers away in the next round as they aim to go deeper in the competition this term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malo Gusto criticised Chelsea’s first-half at Lincoln; a worrying performance amid recent struggles..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,190],"tags":[1066,1047],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carabao-cup","category-chelsea","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}