Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca was forthright in his assessment after Liam Delap was sent off in the closing stages of the match with Wolverhampton Wanderers, calling the decision both avoidable and damaging to his side. Delap was booked in the 79th minute for twice pushing Yerson Mosquera to the ground and, seven minutes later, was dismissed after leading with his elbow in a challenge with Emmanuel Agbadou that could have resulted in a straight red.<\/p>\n
Chelsea have now received five red cards across all competitions this season, a run that has prompted questions about discipline within the squad. Maresca rejected the suggestion his team suffer from an overarching disciplinary problem but made clear he was angry with Delap’s conduct. “We had a very stupid red card that was completely unnecessary and was absolutely deserved,” he said. “We can avoid red cards like these and we have to avoid them.”<\/p>\n
The manager underlined that the dismissal was preventable and that he had repeatedly urged restraint. “When it’s a red card like today, it’s embarrassing. There were two yellow cards in seven minutes, both avoidable. It\u2019s no good. After the yellow card, I told [Delap] four or five times to keep calm.”<\/p>\n
On Delap’s temperament, Maresca added: “But Liam is a player that when he\u2019s inside the pitch probably he\u2019ll be playing the game for himself and he struggles to realise and to listen around him.” Delap becomes the third Chelsea player to be sent off for two yellow cards this season, joining Malo Gusto and Jo\u00e3o Pedro. Robert S\u00e1nchez and Trevoh Chalobah have been shown straight red cards.<\/p>\n
Maresca said his criticism applied across the squad while acknowledging there are differing circumstances behind some dismissals. “[The message is] to everyone,” he said. “I completely understand when there are red cards like Brighton or Man Utd, that is difficult, but red card against Nottingham Forest and red card today, both we can avoid that. And we have to avoid that.”<\/p>\n
Delap must serve a one-match suspension and will miss the upcoming weekend meeting with Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca called Liam Delap’s red card “stupid and embarrassing” and warned the club must avoid them..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1194],"class_list":["post-4130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-discipline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4130","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=4130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}