Chelsea count cost of Rosenior \u2018obsession\u2019 and winning Man Utd battle vs Newcastle<\/a><\/p>\nAlso why did the Chelsea players allow it? Did they actually want the ref in their \u2018leadership group\u2019 huddle? Cole Palmer certainly seemed to find it all ridiculous. Apparently Reece James has initiated the entirely performative display, which could so very easily be done in the dressing-room.<\/p>\n
Steve McMannaman had it right: \u201cI think it\u2019s ridiculous to be very honest. Nowadays with the psychological gains to be made, everyone\u2019s coming up with a new silly idea and this is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy players made the decision that they wanted to be around the ball, to respect the ball and show unity and leadership. That is not my decision,\u201d Rosenior said in another slurry of words. Yeah, respect the ball. That\u2019s what makes champions. Don\u2019t insult the inanimate inflated object, whatever you do. When you come out with such student councillor-style talk, don\u2019t expect it to get you anything other than withering contempt. Respect the ball!<\/p>\n
Rosenior said: \u201cI\u2019m disappointed there\u2019s more focus and emphasis on the things that don\u2019t matter. That was a decision between a leadership group and a team. There is nothing that they\u2019re doing with that huddle that is disrespectful to the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
What are you saying man? Are you really surprised that people are talking about it? It was odd. It\u2019s not like Chelsea played any football to talk about, is it? And who said it was disrespectful? Why are you even saying that? Just plain weird is what it was, son. If you can\u2019t see that, you risk looking like a fool, especially after you lost when having 22 attempts but only three on target, so it\u2019s not as if the circle of silliness achieved anything.<\/p>\n
As usual, he sounded like a low-rent lifestyle coach at a Holiday Inn giving a lecture to 11 desperate divorcees and has the same level of gravitas. Anyone familiar with such speakers would recognise the tolerance for the language and encouragement of such fatuous exercises and thoughts.<\/p>\n
What next? Staring into the mirror shouting \u2018You\u2019re a tiger!\u2019? Do you think Cole Palmer is inspired by these new-age practices? If so, it doesn\u2019t show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be speaking to PGMOL and the refs to get an understanding of why that happened today,\u201d he added. \u201cWe were told that in the rulebook you can be where you want and it\u2019s about timing.\u201d Timing? How is it anything to do with timing? There are rules about when you can surround a referee are there? I doubt it.<\/p>\n
The Rosenior guff doesn\u2019t stop there: \u201cI\u2019m disappointed. I\u2019m going to make it clear. I want to protect my players and I\u2019m respectful to the game. Before the game we had a meeting with the referee. My assistant goes in and the first thing [Tierney] talks about is our huddle. We\u2019re not being disrespectful to the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, who said you were? How are you \u2018protecting your players\u2019 and what from? All this is so inward-looking and self-obsessed. Eddie Howe had it right, saying it had \u201cabsolutely zero relevance to me. I was totally non-fussed by it. I don\u2019t pay any attention to things like that. It\u2019s not going to help us win or lose the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
If people are booing your huddle it\u2019s because they think it\u2019s overly precious and self-indulgent and also because it makes your team look like soft clarts.<\/p>\n
How do Chelsea fans put up with this garbage? It\u2019s like a bunch of dopey students being managed by a social studies lecturer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The whole huddle shebang at Chelsea was just really odd and somehow embodies the state of the club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-349319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}