For the second time in four days, the post-match emotions in the Chelsea dressing room were ones of bewilderment and confusion at the fact we hadn’t taken maximum league points from a contest we largely dominated.
As on Tyneside at the weekend, a late goal provided a stinging blow to Frank Lampard’s side, who twice led against 10-man Arsenal at Stamford Bridge but failed to hold on for the victory. After the game, Callum Hudson-Odoi relayed those feelings of frustration.
‘We’re fuming right now because we worked so hard to get ourselves in front and we had the game in our hands really,’ admitted the teenager. ‘At 2-1 up, we should be seeing the game out so we’re not happy.
‘It was one of those games where we played well throughout, we controlled the game and we should have got the three points with the way we played.’
-Read our report on the derby draw
David Luiz was dismissed when conceding a penalty after half an hour and Jorginho buried the spot-kick emphatically into the bottom corner.
However, the Blues failed to press home their numerical advantage on the scoreboard and in personnel, with our England winger emphasising his manager’s assessment that the team need to improve in both boxes if they are to maintain their standing in the Premier League's top four.
‘We got the early goal from the penalty but then you have to work hard and defend better,’ continued Hudson-Odoi. ‘We worked really hard but we need to be defending our box better and that is something we have to take into the next game.
‘There are times where we should be more ruthless taking our chances. We were attacking and had a lot of chances but we should have taken more of them.’
Leicester City, Manchester United and Tottenham are the next three league assignments for Chelsea, with that run of games likely to play a big part in defining how tight and tense the latter months of the season will be at Stamford Bridge.
‘We’ve got some tough competition coming up so we have to try to get as many points from these games as possible,’ added our number 20. ‘We want to stay in the top four and we want to be competing in the Champions League every year so we’ve got to try our best to get as many points as possible.
‘We’re working hard in training every day so we just need to make sure that when we come into the games, we’re ruthless in both boxes going forward and coming back.’
-Read: Christensen describes errors during derby draw with Arsenal