Maurizio Sarri identifies major Chelsea issue after second half collapse against Slavia Prague

Maurizio Sarri found it difficult to understand Chelseas below-par second-half performance against Slavia Prague but admitted he is happy that his side progressed in the Europa League.

Chelsea raced into a 3-0 lead inside the opening 17 minutes of their quarter-final second leg against the Czech side thanks to goals from Pedro, Olivier Giroud and an own goal by Simon Deli.

By half-time, they were 4-1 up on the night after Pedro had added to his tally swiftly following Tomas Souceks strike for the visitors, giving them a four-goal aggregate cushion.

However, the visitors rallied in the second half and a double from Petr Sevcik within ten minutes of the restart gave Slavia Prague hope of causing a remarkable upset.

Ultimately, Chelsea were able to keep their opponents at bay for the remainder of the game, but Sarri was less than impressed with his players dip in performance.

When asked about Chelseas performance, he said: Very well in the first half, I think. As usual, we started badly in the second half. We need a solution. In the last ten matches, we started like this match. It is a big problem.

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We had to get qualification and maybe we thought we had at the end of the first half. I have never seen something like that, like these opponents.

It was clear the second half would be difficult. We did something wrong. They scored with a kick with no one near. We are happy to go through.

At half-time, I said the target wasRead More – Source

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