{"id":623514,"date":"2026-04-22T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/623514\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:30:08","slug":"how-liam-roseniors-chelsea-stint-has-unravelled-in-a-winless-and-goalless-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/623514\/","title":{"rendered":"How Liam Rosenior’s Chelsea stint has unravelled in a winless (and goalless) run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chelsea<\/a> are on their worst run of form in 114 years and, four months into a six-year contract, the pressure is mounting on Liam Rosenior.<\/p>\n

At the start, it had looked a match made in heaven — in his first 15 matches, Rosenior’s team lost just three times (all three coming at the hands of a then-high-flying Arsenal<\/a>), as he won 10 and Chelsea played some free-flowing, goalscoring football.<\/p>\n

Over the past couple of months, though, it’s been a horror show: five Premier League games, five losses and no goals scored. Remarkably, the run — extended by a 3-0 Champions League loss to Paris Saint-Germain — was interrupted when Chelsea beat Port Vale 7-0 in the FA Cup fifth round.<\/p>\n

The last time Chelsea went five league games without scoring was in 1912 — the year the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic… Metaphor alert!<\/p>\n

– The numbers behind Chelsea’s winless run after Rosenior turns on players<\/a><\/p>\n

March 14: Chelsea 0-1 Newcastle United<\/a>Rosenior looks on during Chelsea’s home defeat to Newcastle United.\u00a0Ryan Pierse\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A game Chelsea lost to the kind of goal that makes FIFA players (EAFC, if you will) rage quit. A straight ball down the middle from Tino Livramento<\/a> sent Joe Willock<\/a> through on goal, one-on-one with Robert S\u00e1nchez<\/a>, and the Newcastle man squared it to Anthony Gordon<\/a> for a tap-in.<\/p>\n

Around the goal, though, it had mostly been all Chelsea. They had 22 shots (even if only three were on target), dominated possession (67%) and were generally competent apart from that one defensive lapse.<\/p>\n

Few could have predicted what was to happen to their finishing in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

March 17: Chelsea 0-3 PSG<\/a>Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez appears dejected after the 3-0 loss to PSG that sealed an 8-2 defeat on aggregate.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

Already trailing 5-2, Chelsea put up another half-decent performance (18 shots to eight, 1.26 xG to 1.09) only to see the sheer ruthlessness of the PSG frontline overwhelm them in the second leg of their round-of-16 tie. Any faint hopes of Chelsea recreating their stunning Club World Cup heroics were summarily dismissed early on when Khvicha Kvaratskhelia<\/a> scored in the sixth minute and Bradley Barcola<\/a> added another in the 14th and it was a steady slide the longer the game went on.<\/p>\n

Individual errors from the Chelsea defence didn’t help and Stamford Bridge started to empty with half an hour to go when Senny Mayulu<\/a> made it 8-2 on aggregate.<\/p>\n

That’s how the score remained, as Chelsea slumped to their joint-heaviest Champions League loss on aggregate ever.<\/p>\n

March 21: Everton 0-3 Chelsea<\/a>Chelsea goalkeeper Robert S\u00e1nchez applauds the Chelsea fans after the 3-0 defeat to Everton.\u00a0Nick Potts\/PA Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

If there were aspects of Chelsea’s performance in the Newcastle and PSG games that could have seen those results attributed to temporary blips, there was absolutely nothing to salvage from their visit to the Hill Dickinson Stadium.<\/p>\n

Chelsea dominated possession (64%) only to do next to nothing with it. The goals they conceded were once again quite simple: a James Garner<\/a> pass through the middle that Beto<\/a> finished with a chip over the advancing Sanchez, Idrissa Gueye<\/a> intercepting the ball, running forward and teeing up Beto to slam one through Sanchez’s legs, Iliman Ndiaye<\/a> running into the box, squaring up his marker and slapping the ball into the top corner.<\/p>\n

Jordan Pickford’s stunning save from an Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a> hit amid a corner melee would be the closest Chelsea came to scoring that day — and for some time yet (in the Premier League).<\/p>\n

April 12: Chelsea 0-3 Manchester City<\/a>Rosenior and Chelsea suffered a humbling defeat against title-chasing Manchester City at Stamford Bridge.\u00a0Marc Atkins\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

After plenty of goals — seven of them, to be exact — got Chelsea past League One strugglers Port Vale and into the semifinals of the FA Cup, Rosenior’s side came back down to earth with a bang.<\/p>\n

Pep Guardiola’s men, furiously chasing table-toppers Arsenal, were held at bay in the first half, but a Nico O’Reilly<\/a> header from close range early in the second broke the hosts’ resolve. Marc Gu\u00e9hi<\/a> made it two with a striker’s finish after a lovely Rayan Cherki<\/a> pass before J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku<\/a> dispossessed Mois\u00e9s Caicedo<\/a> (after a hospital pass from S\u00e1nchez) and made it three.<\/p>\n

In the first half, Marc Cucurella<\/a> had a goal ruled out for a tight offside, but by the end it was a performance of immense City dominance. Chelsea barely got a foothold in the game after City turned on the afterburners, as their gap to the top sides was once again harshly highlighted.<\/p>\n

April 18: Chelsea 0-1 Manchester United<\/a>Young Chelsea star Est\u00eav\u00e3o was forced off in the 15th minute of the defeat to Manchester United.\u00a0Julian Finney\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

United rocked up to the Bridge with a centre-back pairing of 19-year-old Ayden Heaven<\/a> and right-back Noussair Mazraoui<\/a> and yet still left west London with a clean sheet and three points.<\/p>\n

That said. it was 90 minutes of pretty dire football decided by one moment of quality from Bruno Fernandes<\/a> and Matheus Cunha<\/a> as Chelsea failed to convert their possession into goals.<\/p>\n

Rosenior’s team had 59% possession, 1.57xG to United’s 0.29, 21 shots to four, and hit the woodwork thee times. In the end, though, it was to be their fourth straight defeat in the Premier League and the boos that greeted the full-time whistle were deafening.<\/p>\n

April 21: Brighton & Hove Albion 3-0 Chelsea<\/a>The competitive nature of this season’s Premier League means Chelsea are at serious risk of missing out on European football altogether.\u00a0Warren Little\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Nadir. A result that saw Chelsea slide to seventh after five straight league defeats and a performance that prompted Rosenior to call out his players in public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I keep coming out and defending the players,” he said after the match. “That’s indefensible, that performance tonight. The manner of the goals we conceded, the amount of duels that we lost, the lack of intensity in the team. Something needs to change drastically right now.”<\/p>\n

Brighton scored three via Ferdi Kadioglu<\/a>, Jack Hinshelwood<\/a> and Danny Welbeck<\/a>, but it could have been more. At the other end, Bart Verbruggen<\/a> didn’t have to make a single save.<\/p>\n

If ever a moment epitomised the disconnect between coach and players it was Rosenior screaming at Pedro Neto<\/a> to take on his man, only for Neto to reach the edge of the Brighton box, stop, and pass it back to Mois\u00e9s Caicedo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The most difficult night not even just here, so far, at this magnificent football club, but in my career,” said Rosenior. “Some of the things I witnessed today, I never want to see again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chelsea are on their worst run of form in 114 years and, four months into a six-year contract,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-623514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}