Alejandro Garnacho forces Liam Rosenior into brutal decision as Chelsea reality laid bare

The main talking points and moments missed from Chelsea’s thrilling victory over West Ham United on Saturday evening with Enzo Fernandez scoring a stoppage time winner for the Blues

Liam Rosenior said on Wednesday night that what his Chelsea side did on Saturday evening would teach him a lot about the group of players he has at his disposal. They beat Napoli away from home, impressively, but the Blues doing that is not all that surprising.

This group of players have shown they are able to put in a performance where it matters on the big stage. It’s the small stages they have struggled with – a problem that existed under Enzo Maresca as well. Eighteenth-place West Ham United came to Stamford Bridge on Saturday evening and it is far to say, all that Rosenior could have taken from the first-half were some harsh truths.

Chelsea were too passive, too slow, too indecisive against a resurgent Hammers, who had won three in a row going into Saturday’s game. He wasn’t the only one, but Alejandro Garnacho’s display essentially summed up the Blues’ first-half.

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Garnacho continuously gave the ball away and the Chelsea supporters were starting to get on his back at Stamford Bridge. It came as little surprise to see his number go up on the fourth official’s board moments prior to the second-half beginning.

It was a triple change from Rosenior, with the Chelsea head coach hoping to inject some much-needed quality into his side. The first-half was so bad that the majority of those inside Stamford Bridge booed as the players walked off. Rosenior would have jeered if he was a Chelsea fan, too: “They were right to boo. I would have booed us in the first half.

“Our performance was nowhere near the level it needed to be collectively in terms of our energy and our decision-making. That is fair. So to see them after the game, 45 minutes later

While Garnacho was arguably the worst of a bad bunch from a Chelsea point of view, the man who replaced him helped change the game in the second period. Joao Pedro, fresh off the back of Wednesday night’s heroics in Naples, lifted the mood inside the stadium with a header past Alphonse Areola on 57 minutes.

All of a sudden, Stamford Bridge was rocking. It was hard to see that when at half-time, the players were met with a sea of negative noise. It was Wesley Fofana, another of the three half-time subs, that put it on a plate for Joao Pedro.

Remarkably, it was the other sub Marc Cucurella who equalised for Chelsea. And, of course, Joao Pedro set up the winning goal for the brilliant Enzo Fernandez.

For the second game in a row, Rosenior changed the game at the break with his substitutes. Though, nobly, Rosenior protected those that came off at the break: “I don’t put that just down to the changes I made – it’s very difficult.

“We’ve had so many games in a short space of time. I was fearful of a lack of energy and not energy or lack of application, but I felt our decision-making was really poor in the first half. When to keep the ball, when we pressed, we were just too far off it.

“West Ham were by far the better team. We had a reaction at half-time. The reaction of the team in the second half tells me that we’ve got something really, really special here if I can utilise the squad in the correct way.”

Rosenior keeps making the right in-game decisions but the head coach will know it is not sustainable to keep having to make such drastic alterations to his team. Against Arsenal on Tuesday night, he will have to get his starting XI spot on or risk losing the tie early on at the Emirates Stadium.