Our Premier League International Cup campaign came to an end in the quarter-finals following a narrow 2-1 defeat to PSV Eindhoven at Stamford Bridge on Thursday evening.

A good start to the match had seen us take the lead when Ronnie Stutter slotted in excellently from Deivid Washington's equally impressive assist. Unfortunately, we were punished ruthlessly by PSV when twice conceding possession around our own box, even if the penalty awarded for the second goal seemed harsh on keeper Ted Sharman-Lowe, as he appeared to pull out of the challenge without making contact.

However, given our older and more experienced opponents compete in the second division of the Dutch men’s league system and had a full German international in their starting line-up, the Blues can take heart from how hard we pushed PSV and arguably deserved more.

‘The overriding feeling was that it was a really tight game that could have gone either way,' said Under-21s head coach Mark Robinson.

‘The biggest disappointment is the goals we ended up conceding. If you’ve lost a game to two great goals you just have to accept it, but after being really resilient with good defending, to lose it to the two goals we did, after scoring an excellent goal ourselves, that was the main disappointment.

‘After that the only bit of disappointment was we didn’t feel we really got after them well enough until the last 10 minutes when were looking for an equaliser.'

The timing of the visitors' two goals was also unfortunate, as both arrived during periods when Chelsea were on top, but again those spells of control offer plenty of promise for the future, even if we weren't able to make them count on this occasion.

‘We started the game really well on the front foot and created a couple of early chances including the goal, which was a great move and a great finish by Ronnie. As it went on, their movement was very good and did cause us a few problems towards the end of the half, but I thought we were going to see the half out until the mistake.

'We said at half-time that there’s two options when you’re playing a team with good movement like that. Either you play a mid-block and counter-attacking football - and we’re not going to do that because we’re Chelsea - or you have to match their runs, communicate and stay with people, which psychologically is tough, then when you get the ball impose yourselves on them.

‘I thought we looked comfortable when we came out for the second half and the most likely to score, but then we kind of gave them the goal, although it didn’t look like there was any contact for the penalty.’

Despite the frustration which inevitably comes following a loss in a close game like this one, Robinson underlined the fact that there were good points to the performance and some valuable lessons to take on board.

‘On the whole there were positives and some excellent individual performances. When you lose a game it’s always easy to not find those positives, but there were plenty.

‘They were very experienced and play at a good level of men’s football, across the board we were probably two to four years younger, but we felt like we could and maybe should have got something out of the game.

‘Maybe if we’d had another five minutes we would have been able to, but it just took us a bit too long to put them under pressure after their second goal. But that’s something we can learn from, so we have to go back and reflect on that now before the next game.’