Graham Potter again insists Chelsea’s performance was ‘positive’ in defeat

Chelsea head coach Graham Potter has once again claimed that his side played well in a game that they were expected to win but fell to defeat.

The Blues were beaten 2-0 by Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge on Saturday evening, slipping out of the Premier League’s top half and dropping to 11th following the loss.

Ollie Watkins took advantage of an error by Marc Cucurella to put the visitors ahead in the first half, before a rocket from John McGinn sealed the points for Villa in the second.

Home supporters seemed to turn on Potter, with chants of ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’ and ‘you’re getting sacked in the morning’ heard around the ground.

But Potter – not for the first time – has leapt to the defence of his Chelsea players following a disappointing result and insisting they played well.

“We have to do better. There are a lot of good things in the game, attacking entries, shots, the stats, it’s a positive performance, in terms of the scoreline it’s not,” Potter said at his post-match press conference.

“We’re really disappointed. It can happen, it’s football, the boys gave everything, they tried, they attacked.

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“You need to defend better. I’m responsible for that. We need to look at that and do better. It’s a great strike from John McGinn. If you look at the stats from the game, there’s a lot there for us. We have to accept it and do better.

“We wanted to win our home game here, there was a positivity there. It wasn’t a lack of effort. We need to manage moments better. The score tells a story.

“We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We’re disappointed, everybody is. We have a fantastic game on Tuesday night to put it right.”

Potter added: “Defensively we’ve left ourselves too open but again if you look at the stats of the game we had chances ourselves, we had one-v-ones, but the most important thing, putting the ball into the net, we were second-best.

“I don’t like to blame anybody, I have to take responsibility. We are a team, we have to stay together, we are together. We win or lose together.

“We will recover and we will prepare for the next game. We need to respond, that’s clear. But we look forward to it.”

The pressure is surely mounting on Potter despite being hand-picked by co-owner Todd Boehly to succeed Thomas Tuchel back in September.

Chelsea look increasingly unlikely to qualify for Europe at all next season, let alone the UEFA Champions League, while they are now also the lowest-ranked of the division’s west London clubs, with Brentford and Fulham ahead of them in the table.