Chelsea’s struggles continued this weekend, finding themselves in a two-goal hole before clawing back for a draw against lowly Newcastle.
Ayoze Perez put Newcastle ahead before the break, andGeorginio Wijnaldum made it 2-0 on the hour mark. Chelsea were getting throughly outplayed by Steve McClaren’s side, who entered the match as one of the coldest teams in all of English football.
Down two goals, Jose Mourinho put on Ramires andWillian, as both substitutes tallied late to salvage a draw for Chelsea.
After the match, Mourinho rated his team’s performance to start the match a “minus-one out of ten,” and wasn’t sure how a team could play so poorly and then turn things around so quickly.
I think in the first half from zero to 10: minus-one. That bad.
In every aspect of the game, we were bad. There were too many poor individual performances. As a consequence of that, it’s impossible for a team to be a good competitive team.
After 2-0, I moved the team and they responded very well to get a point which is not what you want – but it’s not bad.
I have to try to understand why one team can play so badly in the first half and so well in another one.
Last season when Chelsea won the Premier League title, they lost three matches and conceded a league-low 32 goals. Through seven matches this season, Chelsea has lost three matches and conceded 14 goals.
While the Blues did play better in the second half and showed resilience to fight back for the draw, they were still down two goals to a Newcastle side that had looked lifeless in the opening stages of the season.
Mourinho has little time to figure things out, as Chelsea travels to Portugal for a midweek Champions League clash with Porto
