Jody Morris wasn’t too impressed with one piece of play from Chelsea’s Axel Disasi during last night’s FA Cup win over Leeds United.
Chelsea qualified for the FA Cup quarter finals by beating Championship club Leeds 3-2 yesterday at Stamford Bridge.
Following on from Sunday’s crushing defeat to Liverpool in the League Cup final, it was vital they responded in midweek.
It was the worst possible start when a defensive mix up gifted Mateo Joseph the opener for Leeds inside the opening 10 minutes. Thankfully, Chelsea responded with first-half goals from Nicolas Jackson and Mykhailo Mudryk.
Leeds got a deserved equaliser on the hour mark with a second from Joseph, but Conor Gallagher was Chelsea’s hero by scoring a 90th minute winner.
It didn’t end up costing Chelsea a result, but Axel Disasi won’t look back too fondly on his role in the goal that put Leeds 1-0 ahead.
The defender passed the ball into Moises Caicedo on the edge of the box despite the fact he was surrounded by three Leeds bodies. The visitors did manage to steal the ball and punish some sloppy play.
Morris wrote on X: “It’s not a case of ‘arrogance’ or ‘silly for playing out from the back’ or ‘should go long’ at all… it’s purely that Disasi takes too long to play Caicedo… it was actually very easy to bypass the press if he just played Caicedo quicker… simple!!”
Axel Disasi form
Disasi’s emerged as Chelsea’s first-choice centre-back in the last couple of months, but we’re spotting a few errors creep back into his game.
The £39m defender (Sky Sports) does have big pressure on his shoulders as a leader in the backline.
Aged 25, we still think there’s a lot more to come from the France international. This young Chelsea side badly needs the mature version of him now, though.
We’ve seen he’s got the quality to be the rock in Chelsea’s defence. Speaking via The Rest Is Football earlier this month, Gary Linker and Micah Richards both called Disasi “fantastic”.
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