Maresca: Chelsea didn’t win unfortunately

London (dpa)

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca has confirmed that his team deserved to win against Crystal Palace, had it not been for the bad luck that plagued their players, while pointing out that the opposing team should have had one of its players sent off.
Chelsea returned to losing points in the English Premier League, after falling into a 1-1 draw with its guest Crystal Palace, in the third round of the competition, at Stamford Bridge Stadium, in the British capital, London.
“As I said, we deserved to win the game,” Maresca told reporters after the match. “We had a lot of chances, we controlled the game, we didn’t allow Crystal Palace to have any chances. In the first half, they only had one shot on target, by Adam Wharton.”
“We conceded the equaliser in the second half, overall we deserved to win the game, unfortunately we didn’t, the performance was very good, after we conceded the goal we lost a bit of control of the game and the game started to go up and down and that doesn’t really suit our style of play, they were very good at moving the ball around,” Maresca added.
Maresca believes that Crystal Palace player Will Hughes deserved to receive a second yellow card, and therefore a red card from the match.
Asked if Hughes should have been sent off, Maresca said: “These decisions change the game for sure. He should have had a second yellow card, it was clear, but the referee thought differently and it could have been a completely different situation, especially since we were 1-0 up. I think the Crystal Palace manager’s reaction to take him off immediately was proof that he deserved to be sent off. I have nothing to say.”
Regarding his concern about the team’s defensive level, Maresca replied: “First of all, I am always nervous, it does not matter if we have a clean sheet or not, I also like to analyse the game, in today’s game, we conceded a goal but they did not have any other chances on our goal.”
“It’s not a defensive problem that we need to solve, of course, we need to do a lot of things better, but today we didn’t keep a clean sheet, not because the team wasn’t good, in the end you can only have one shot on target, unfortunately we conceded a great goal so it was impossible for Robert Sanchez (Chelsea goalkeeper) to save it.”