Chelsea star fires back and disagrees with Liam Rosenior's explosive comments

Chalobah didn’t see any issue with Chelsea’s effort levels (Picture: Sky Sports)

Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah has defended his team’s efforts in the defeat against Brighton despite scathing criticism from their head coach Liam Rosenior.

The Blues fell to a dismal 3-0 defeat at the AMEX on Tuesday night , their fifth Premier League defeat on the bounce having also failed to score in that period. It marks the club’s worst run of results since 1912.

Chelsea’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League next season are fading fast and they could find themselves in the bottom half of the table by the end of the week should results elsewhere go against them.

Rosenior has defended his squad throughout a rotten run of results but finally took aim at the group after the ‘indefensible’ performance against the Seagulls, insisting only ‘three or four’ of his players gave everything.

Brighton players ran seven kilometres more than their opponents on Tuesday – the latest in a woeful trend with Chelsea sat 20 th for distance covered per game in the Premier League this season, almost 10k short of leaders Manchester City .

Despite those stats and Rosenior’s damning comments, Chalobah saw no issues with the effort levels from his teammates.

Asked if Tuesday’s defeat was down to the gameplan or its execution, Chalobah told Sky Sports : ‘We tried our best, we worked on it throughout the week but we got beat today and we have to go again.’

Rosenior blasted his teammates after the woeful result (Picture: Getty)

On Brighton repeatedly beating Chelsea to the punch, he continued: ‘I personally think the boys were running their socks off.

‘If you look in the dressing room, everyone is tired. It’s nothing to do with effort. We gave it our all. We got beat today.’

Pushed on stats showing Brighton outran them, Chalobah said: ‘We ran today. The stats are stats. I can see The boys are tired and we ran.’

Chelsea were second best all over the pitch on Tuesday night (Picture: Getty)

Rosenior is under mounting pressure having only taken the reins at west London in January with players making their discontent known.

The former Strasbourg boss suspended Enzo Fernandez for two matches for ‘crossing the line’ with a string of comments that placed his own future at the club in doubt. Marc Cucurella avoided similar punishment after commenting Rosenior’s predecessor Enzo Maresca should not have left the club.’