Blues defender Cesar Azpilicueta stated that Chelsea lost their grip and control in the FA Cup win at the KC Stadium against Hull City, claiming the Chelsea players were too eager to put themselves before the team’s best interests.
The Spanish full-back played the full 90 minutes against the Championship outfit, as Chelsea battled out a 2-1 victory on their travels to progress through to the next round.
The West London side was dominant for the first 70 minutes and should have added to goals from Michy Batshuayi and Fikayo Tomori and basically killed off the game, but they allowed Hull too much of the ball after that point and almost paid the price for those missed chances.
The hosts grabbed a goal back through Kamil Grosicki as his free-kick took a big deflection off Croatian midfielder Mateo Kovacic to wrong-foot Willy Caballero in the Chelsea goal, and that allowed the Tigers to stand a comeback into the match with only 12 minutes remaining until the final whistle.
Hull had chances to force a replay as well as forcing the Premier League side into some last-ditch defending but failed to conjure an equalizer.
Speaking after the game, Chelsea captain Azpilicueta fired a warning shot to his teammates, “With the chances we had, we cannot concede in this kind of circumstances and we have to control better, We know we have to improve our game if we want to improve as a team and go far because tonight was a night we could have handled much better. It’s not the first game where we didn’t manage the game well, and at the end there we were on our box suffering. Sometimes we can be punished but tonight not, but we know we have to improve.”
