Rosenior was broadly pleased with his team despite the defeat – his first since taking charge – and highlighted positives in almost every individual performance.<\/p>\n
“The biggest problem for us is that we had a lot of illness, injury and we’re playing against a very, very good team,” added Rosenior.<\/p>\n
Cole Palmer, Reece James and Malo Gusto all failed late fitness tests, while Moises Caicedo was suspended and illness forced Liam Delap and Jamie Gittens on the sidelines too.<\/p>\n
On Palmer, Rosenior said: “He had a minor strain in his thigh. If you play a player too early in January with a minor strain, it can turn into six weeks out. I can’t afford to lose Cole Palmer for six weeks because he’s that good.”<\/p>\n
He added James had “a big knock on his hip”, but “hopefully he will be back for Saturday”.<\/p>\n
“Gittens was ill last night, Liam Delap was due to play – he was ill four hours before the game,” said Rosenior.<\/p>\n
“Both of them had really high temperatures – dangerously high. Hopefully they can rest up and will be OK for Saturday.”<\/p>\n
Rosenior was keen to point out Chelsea<\/a> had competed well against an Arsenal<\/a> side that had lost only twice in all competitions this season, and his team can still fight back in the second leg at Emirates Stadium on 3 February.<\/p>\n “We’re playing probably the best pressing team in Europe today, with their full\u2011strength team, and we’re missing a lot of players,” he added.<\/p>\n “I was proud of the bravery of the players to try to execute certain aspects of what I asked. In six days, we’ve had two games. I’m not asking for time because I think the group are good enough to win now.<\/p>\n “But I need to put my stamp on the team as well – otherwise there’s no point in me being here. So it’s a fine balance, and hopefully the fans will see the progression in the team. But we need to win at the same time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rosenior was broadly pleased with his team despite the defeat – his first since taking charge – and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-371153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}