The mind boggles as to how many ‘celebrate’ and ‘insightful’ LinkedIn notifications Liam Rosenior will have received across the last fortnight after four wins from five, with 13 goals scored and two clean sheets.
After a 3-2 away victory over the Scudetto winners to seal automatic qualification for the Champions League last-16 in the biggest game of his short tenure (and therefore his career) against one of the old breed of Chelsea managers, he will be expecting several glowing recommendations on the interweb’s foremost networking platform at the very least.
Antonio Conte rarely makes bones and none whatsoever were made over the difficulty of the task facing his injury-ravaged Napoli side. Short of Kevin De Bruyne, David Neres, Billy Gilmour and Matteo Politano, among others, ahead of the game the ever-angry Italian said: “If the league started today, everyone would put Napoli between 8th and 10th place.”
And they really didn’t look to have much about them for the first 20 minutes, which saw Chelsea swan about the pitch probing for openings and ended with the Blues being awarded a penalty for one of those handballs that is a handball but is also a horribly maddening one, as Reece James’ free-kick struck an arm in the wall.
It took Enzo Fernandez converting that penalty to wake Napoli up to the realisation that a) they needed to win to remain in the competition, and b) Chelsea only had one centre-back on the pitch.
It will have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that the two Napoli goals saw Wesley Fofana – the poor sod – horribly isolated in defence, first by Antonio Vergara, who Maradona turned him in the Maradona to score his first senior goal, and then Rasmus Hojlund, who nipped in ahead of him to get to a low cross and poke the ball past Robert Sanchez.
Rosenior got the team selection wrong. Trevoh Chalobah clearing the ball away from what he will have been told for his 18 years on the Chelsea books is ‘the John Terry position’ at the front post after being introduced on the hour mark should not have been the revelation it perhaps was for the Blues boss. He may not believe the centre-backs he has are up to scratch – it’s hard to disagree – but just not playing them is no solution to that problem.
He did though crucially have Cole Palmer coming from the right – where he’s caused most damage in a Chelsea shirt – after bringing him on at half-time, and the only head-turning of note from the Manchester United-linked playmaker was to spot Joao Pedro and assist him to score two truly sublime goals.
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In between the lines for the first after a flowing move from the back from Chelsea, Palmer played the ball round the corner for Pedro, who took an excellent first touch to buy himself a bit of time and space, before smashing his shot from the edge of the box back across the goalkeeper and into the top corner.
That was stunning and so was his second to secure victory as he acted as a wall for Palmer before spinning in behind the Napoli defence, latching on to Palmer’s perfectly weighted through ball, slowing his heart rate and slotting the ball into the corner. That’s now four goals in five games under Rosenior for a player who was a cause for concern towards the end of his time under Enzo Maresca.
The character shown by his side – something Rosenior has spoken endlessly about being a focus of his attention since he arrived – is another significant feather in his cap after a game that some may dismiss owing to the relative strength of the squads on the night, where Napoli were in the table and how rotten Conte’s Champions League record, but absolutely shouldn’t be.
It’s no mean feat to win a game in that stadium, and to do it with such inexperience could be a huge moment for him and his players for the rest of this season and beyond.
