Chelsea head coach Liam Rosenia has accused Arsenal of showing disrespect during the warm-up before the second leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final.
A furious Rosenior was caught on Sky Sports cameras telling the Gunners: “That’s your half, that’s your ****** half. ****** stay there,” before Chelsea lost 4-2 on aggregate at the Emirates.
Sky Sports footage showed Arsenal’s coaching staff entering Chelsea’s half of the pitch during their warm-up, with Rosenior admitting it had “impacted” on his team’s ability to warm up.
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Chelsea head coach Liam Rosenior has explained why he was furious when Arsenal’s coaching staff invaded Chelsea’s half of the pitch during the warm-up.
He said: “That wasn’t the (Arsenal) players. With all due respect, when you warm up you have your own territory and the other team has theirs. I never asked my team or the coach to invade the opposition’s territory.”
“At that moment, I thought the place they were operating in was not appropriate. They were affecting the warm-up of my players and staff. I asked them, perhaps not politely, to make sure they stayed in their own half.”
“I’m not here to play mind games, it’s just what I think is right and respectful and hopefully we respect that and other teams do the same.
“There’s a certain etiquette in soccer. I always try to be as respectful as possible. I always want to win. I’ve never asked the coach (to do that).”
“I have no problems with anyone at Arsenal. They have a great manager. Mikel (Arteta) is someone I have a lot of respect for.”
“But at that moment, I didn’t feel like my team was being shown any respect.”
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Chelsea head coach Liam Rosenior had some standout moments before, during and after the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg defeat to Arsenal.
Despite criticism for Rosenior’s cautious tactical approach, Kai Havertz scored in stoppage time to give Arsenal a 1-0 victory that night.
Asked if he was surprised by the reaction, Rosenior said: “No, I wasn’t surprised by the noise at all. That comes with being Chelsea’s head coach. If I had been surprised by it, I wouldn’t have been prepared for this role.”
“What people say outside the club and what they think about my team’s play has no influence on my decision-making or what I think is right for the team.
“In hindsight, we didn’t do well. You can always change and improve certain things that you do, but at the same time I feel like it was a very solid performance at home against a team that was doing very well.”
“We changed things in the second half and the game could have easily gone our way. It’s disappointing that we couldn’t win, but now we’ll move on and focus on Wolves.”
