Chelsea captain tries the impossible with defence of teammate’s terrible decision

Speaking to the Sun, captain Reece James defended his teammates. Malo Gusto got the latest expulsion for a second yellow on Saturday.

“It’s difficult, if you look at all of them, they’re all very different. They’re not all straight reds. I was next to him when I saw him going for the tackle, and it was a split second in it. He was there to win the ball, and just mistimed it,” James said.

Gusto did mistime it, and it wasn’t violent. But really, that’s no excuse. It was the 85th minute and we were winning 3-0. There was zero need to go to ground at all. Even if the Forest played had been clean in on goal there would have been no justification to bring him down.

“I wouldn’t say it is a problem for us. We have to accept it. This is what’s happened in the past few games, but it’s not something that will continue.”

It’s easy to say it won’t continue… but we’re old enough to remember Mauricio Pochettino saying there wasn’t a discipline problem as recently as 18 months ago. He’s right that these are all different cards – but so what? Other teams manage to avoid all of these cards, no matter the variety.

In other news…

James was excellent against Forest and after the game he praised young goalscorer Josh Acheampong. he told Enzo Maresca to pick the defender more often in order to help him improve.

Acheampong was a major target in the summer for Borussia Dortmund, but according to Fabrizio Romano Chelsea said no.