Roy Keane was unimpressed with Chelsea’s performance in their 4-1 victory over Tottenham on Monday night, describing their display as ‘very, very average’.
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Spurs raced into an early lead through Dejan Kulusevski but the game flipped on its head when Cristian Romero was shown a red card and conceded a penalty, which Cole Palmer converted.
The hosts were then reduced to nine men shortly after half-time when Destiny Udogie was shown a second yellow card in a truly barmy match full of drama, incidents and VAR checks.
Despite Tottenham’s numerical disadvantage, they frustrated Chelsea with their high line for large spells until Nicolas Jackson finally netted in the 75th minute – before adding two more goals deep into stoppage time.
Keane, though, felt the scoreline flattered Chelsea considerably, criticising both the Blues’ performance and the general level of quality in Monday’s fiery match.
‘I didn’t really enjoy it. I thought there was too much going on, a couple of sending offs,’ said Keane on The Overlap’s Stick to Football show.
‘I didn’t think the quality was that great in the game. Listen, I know Spurs were up against it, but I thought Chelsea were very, very average.
‘But just the whole game, when there’s a couple of sending offs, it spoils the game for me. I know there’s plenty of talking points but sometimes you sit down and just want to watch a good game, a good quality game.
‘So I just think too many stoppages, too much stuff going on, it just spoiled it for me that particular night. Generally speaking it’s great to have some talking points but to me there was just too much going on, too much madness.
‘And ultimately the Spurs players were making some crazy decisions. The first 15 minutes they were fine but even afterwards I was disappointed with Chelsea.
‘I know they scored late on and it looks a comfortable scoreline, but up until the last few minutes Spurs were still in with a chance. Generally speaking I just didn’t enjoy it, I thought there was a real lack of quality in the game.’
Fellow pundit Ian Wright felt Spurs could have got something from the game had they sat in and defended deep, saying: ‘I couldn’t understand going down to nine men and your tactics are to be on the halfway line with defenders already [getting ready to run back] without pressure on the ball.
‘There was no way they were going to hold on when you’ve got that line like that, and I was thinking to myself, “If Ten Hag had those tactics everybody would have lost their minds”.
‘But the deflection tactics of Ange were like Fergie-esque, the way he deflected everything off the way they played and what happened and the fact they got two players sent off for just craziness and then playing that high line. I thought that was genius form his point of view.
‘What I couldn’t understand with Tottenham is that Chelsea – as much as they’re creating chances – they’re missing chances left, right and centre, so to not have the two banks of four with one in front and maybe break on them, to frustrate Chelsea when you’re 1-1, was baffling to me, I couldn’t understand what was going on.’
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