Phil Neville identified the weakness in Chelsea’s set-up which Hull City exploited as they earned a 2-2 draw in the Premier League on Saturday.
Chelsea looked as if they were set to coast to a comfortable victory when Morgan Rogers opened the scoring at Stamford Bridge after only eight minutes.
But newly-promoted Hull turned the game on its head inside eight first-half minutes when Mohamed Belloumi made the most of defensive errors from Jorrel Hato and Emiliano Martinez to score a quickfire double.
Joao Pedro drew Chelsea level after the break, but the Blues were perhaps a tad fortunate to escape with a point as Oli McBurnie and Mohamed-Ali Cho spurned great opportunities for the visitors late on.
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Chelsea have now gone 20 consecutive league games without a clean sheet, their worst run in 65 years, and Neville was keen to praise Hull’s attack in exposing Xabi Alonso’s fragile defence.
‘We felt before the game, Hull were just going to park the bus, but they did not do that,’ he said on NBC Sports.
‘I think what they obviously did, they saw weaknesses in the Chelsea set-up defensively. There was lots of space on that right-hand side, in behind Neto.
‘They created chances, they high-pressed, they were hard to beat. I thought it was an outstanding tactical performance from Hull.
‘I thought that was a top coach’s tactical performance. You know, sometimes when you get these teams coming up, they just park the bus.
‘He went man-for-man at times. He was mid-block at times. His defenders are never, ever far away from each other.
‘But I thought what impressed me most today was their attacking play. I thought tactically, attacking-wise, they picked the holes; they found the spaces.
‘I thought they deserved probably more than the point.’
Speaking after the game, Alonso criticised his side’s ‘soft’ defensive display, but said there are no easy fixes for his side’s poor record at the back.
‘It will take time to or it will take moments to fix them when we get the lead and you still need to be competing and not to give the chance so easily for them to come back, especially in the first goal, we can do much better,’ the Spaniard said.
‘It was too soft to give them this hope because until then we were controlling, we were creating chances, but that momentum that we had changed the mood and the score of the game and it’s something that we need to be talking [about], we address and we will get better, but it’s having an impact on our performances at the moment.
‘We need to be aware that from any situation, any team in the Premier League can hurt you. Today it was from a long ball, two bounces, the way it happened.
‘You need to be very aware, very ready that the danger can come from any situation. If you are soft or if you are not prepared, you will get punished and we have been punished that way.’
Chelsea will look to get back to winning ways next Friday when they take on west London rivals Brentford.
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