Eden Hazard has begun to publicly criticize the Chelsea defense
It’s safe to say that no one at Chelsea is free from blame after the club’s pitiful performance against Arsenal this weekend. Unfortunately for the Blues, star attacker Eden Hazard has chosen to publicly lay the blame on his side’s defense.
The Belgian attacker does have a point about how poor the Chelsea back line has performed. The club have fallen behind early against both Arsenal and Leicester City, and as a result, have struggled to play catch up. The point isn’t whether or not Hazard is factually correct though. Instead, my issue is that he has no room to say anything at all.
Things might be different if he were off to a perfect start to the campaign. While Hazard has been much better than he was during the first half of his disastrous 2016-16 campaign, he still could do much better. In particular, his performance in the Arsenal loss leaves him no room to criticize anyone else.
He was pretty poor against Arsene Wenger’s side. His 71 minutes on the pitch only managed to earn him a Whoscored.com player rating of 6.11. That’s well below the Premier League average. It certainly isn’t the sort of rating you expect from a player with Hazard’s obvious attacking talent.
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We shouldn’t be surprised at Hazard showing his immaturity though. It’s something he’s done over and over again throughout his time at Chelsea. Just look at his pitiful spell under Jose Mourinho last year. Can anyone really say that was the sort of effort level that Chelsea would expect to receive from such a talented player? I should think not.
Antonio Conte needs to step in and have a word with his dynamic attacker sooner rather than later. If Hazard continues to make critical marks about his own teammates, he could easily cause a serious divide in the Blues’ dressing room. It could be just the sort of conflict that plagued the last permanent Chelsea manager.
Eden Hazard needs to focus his energies on his own play. When he’s playing his best, most energetic football, maybe then he can start to speak publicly about his own teammates’ failings. Until then, he should spend more time on the training ground and less in the press room.
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