Cucurella’s isolation highlights Chelsea’s defensive flaws, ultimately leading to their loss against Newcastle

It’s easy to look back on a 4-1 defeat for Chelsea and feel like such a comfortable win for Newcastle was all but guaranteed.

By the end Chelsea were ragged, and the Magpies’ goals were so soft, that it’s easy to forget that we were really in the game and creating a decent amount until their second and third goal in quick succession broke us.

The highlights from the game are out now, and you can go back over the events and see what went so wrong for us.

You can see the highlights from the game in the clip embedded here, or by following the link here:

What’s clear is that the defending is just not good enough. The third goal comes from an individual error from Thiago Silva, but the killer second that changed the game is just from an awful defensive phase – looking at the image above we see Marc Cucurella isolated at the far post with two defenders as the ball is crossed in.

That’s a systemic failure, not a Cucurella mistake.