Chelsea’s travels to Italy continue to bring sorrow to the club. This time around the club will rue the money and energy spent on sending the players all the way to Rome. A simple forfeiting of the match would have earned them the same result. A fluent and well-drilled AS Roma side schooled the English Premier League Champions and toyed around with them in the second half, picking them off one at a time.
Here are the woeful player ratings for Chelsea on a night the Blues would rather forget:
Thibaut Courtois: 5.5
Could do nothing about the first two goals but was at first for leaving too much space on his near post for the third. Made two beautiful saves however, to prevent further humiliation for Chelsea.
Cesar Azpilicueta: 4.5
An uncharacteristic bad game for Chelsea the defender looked out of sorts and made all sorts of basic mistakes.
Gary Cahill: 3
Seems extremely scared to play as the wide man in the 3 back system. Ends up sucking in the wing back in front of him everytime causing Chelsea to lose structure. Produced an absolute horror show when defending one on one.
David Luiz: 4
Reminded Chelsea of his golden days of the past when he would carelessly stroll out with the ball to end up losing it and leave his man unmarked for set pieces. Dzeko made a mockery of Luiz’s positional play by winning every battle against the Brazilian.
Antonio Rudiger: 3.5
The passionate German seemed overwhelmed by his return to his former club and could not focus enough to defend and do the basics right on the night. Left the ball for El Shaarawy to pounce on and score the second goal and committed several other mistakes as the night progressed.
Marcos Alonso: 5
Was caught napping for the first goal but made up with a decent performance for the rest of the night and perhaps was Chelsea’s least error-prone defender on the night.
Cesc Fabregas: 4
Conte seriously needs to consider resting Fabregas as the Spaniard has clearly run out of engine. Overran and outmuscled in the middle of the park by Roma, he could not even get his passes going and lost several balls in the middle of the park.
Tiemoue Bakayoko: 2
A beautiful blue dyed hair on his head and a horror show of a footballing brain inside it. Somebody needs to take him back to the football school in France and try to teach him the basics of the game. He was the true Halloween nightmare for Chelsea tonight.
Pedro: 4
Ineffective and inefficient, he was very easily dealt with by Roma.
Alvaro Morata: 3
Looks a different player post his injury, he is unwilling to hold balls or link up the play to the best of his ability. He is in a play station mood and simply wants to score goals without making any meaningful contribution to the team. When presented the chance to score, he missed a sitter.
Eden Hazard: 7
One has to feel sorry for the Belgian, who was not only Chelsea’s best player on the night but was perhaps one of the brightest sparks on the pitch overall. Hugely let down by his teammates, Hazard will feel his hard work is not worth it if Conte doesn’t give the rest of the team a telling soon.
Willian: 4
Given half an hour or so to make an impact, he managed to completely avoid controversy by simply doing nothing with his time on the pitch.
Danny Drinkwater: 5
Still managed to make a few decent passes and a few clearances with his little time on the pitch. Looks more and more likely to replace Bakayoko very soon given that Conte is tired of seeing the blue-dyed hair man commit mistakes galore on the pitch.
Batshuayi: N/A
Came on too late to make any impact on the match.
