That slight sting you’re feeling right now is pride. Not power, just pride, messing with you after last night. But we have to fight through it. We have to learn from it.
Most importantly, we must not wallow in it.
Last night happened. Nothing’s going to change that. It’s all about the response now. The season is far from over, and Chelsea’s priorities were never going to be in the Champions League (as much as we’d never admit that).
Jorginho, as vice-captain and one of the more experienced players on the team, knows the importance of keeping a healthy perspective, even if it might require a bit of reality-distortion.
”It is real tough for the changing room, for us, but we have the other competitions and we still have another game. Anything can happen because in football you never know.
”We just have to believe in ourselves, don’t put our heads down. We need to keep working, keep pushing, because we are a good team. We need to believe, work hard and be together.”
Jorginho himself won’t be able to play in the second leg after picking up a silly yellow card — a rather ironic development considering his own quotes from before the game, when he urged his teammates to keep their calm should anything go bad.
And boy, did things ever go bad!
As much as we were hoping Saturday’s result would be a turning point for the season, we’re now left hoping that yesterday’s result won’t be the one to completely derail the season.
Football, like life, comes at you fast.
Time to sink or swim, once again.
“We know we have a lot to improve and they showed so many things to us that we can learn from our mistakes and from them as well.”
“At this level if you concede a chance, they can kill you and when you create you have to score — even if you are playing worse than the other team because then things can change.”
“They were really, really good and we couldn’t press very well. I think we were not compact on the pitch and not pressing as a team. So that made them confident with the ball and play easily.”
-Jorginho; source: Football.London
On the plus side, there aren’t too many teams of Bayern’s caliber in the Premier League — even if we’ve made a few them look close.
Taking this one on the chin and moving on to our other targets thus becomes even more important. Next up are AFC Bournemouth, away, on Saturday. They are one of the teams we’ve inexplicably dropped points to already.
May the lessons of yesterday become our strengths this weekend!