‘A positive performance!’ Graham Potter reacts to Chelsea defeat against Villa

With European qualification already only a remote possibility, Chelsea’s expensively assembled squad now look almost certain to end the season in mid-table obscurity after slipping to the eighth defeat of Potter’s 22-game Premier League tenure.

Ollie Watkins opened the scoring, finding the back of the net for the fifth game in succession, in the 18th minute after he capitalised on woeful defending from Marc Cucurella and Kalidou Koulibaly.

Chelsea squandered chances to equalise with Mykhailo Mudryk particularly culpable while Ben Chilwell had a goal ruled out for a push on Ashley Young.

The Blues struggled to get going in the second half and were consigned to defeat when John McGinn capped a superb week after he played a part in Scotland’s famous win over Spain by blasting home a long-range second.

Despite another damaging blow to his reputation, Potter was adamant his players gave everything while there were numerous positives to take from the defeat.

He said: ‘In both boxes we were second best. The first goal for them is disappointing from our perspective.

‘There were a lot of good things in the game, a lot of attacking entries and shots. If you look at the stats of the game it was a positive performance, but in terms of the scoreline it’s not. We’re all really disappointed.’

He added: ‘The most important number is the one that goes against us. We have to do better. In terms of the game, you can see the players gave everything, they took on the responsibility, they tried, they had lots of entries into the box and shots and attacks.

‘Ultimately we conceded a poor first goal which makes everything very emotional and rightly so. We’re disappointed because we’re 1-0 down but the players responded well they kept on responding throughout. The second goal is disappointing because we started the second half well.

‘But if you look at the stats apart from the main one there is a lot of positives there. But at the moment into doesn’t feel too positive.

‘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.’

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