Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta is one of the longest serving players at the club.
He’s been around through the reign of a few managers at this point, and he was here in the Jose Mourinho days where we had a superb defensive record.
It must have been strange for him to play these last two seasons, leaking goals left, right and centre, and you can tell from his quotes in the Champions League press conference today that he’s not comfortable with the situation:
“What is clear is that if we want to fight for everything we have to improve defensively,” Azpilicueta said in quotes picked up by Goal.com.
“You have to dig in and get a clean sheet. It’s very important for the confidence of the team to have this solidity. We have to start getting this consistency of not conceding goals. When you have the solidity defensively, it gives a boost to the whole team, to the attacking players to create chances.”
“When you are defensively weak sometimes we feel like we have to score three or four goals every game. As a defender, I feel bad when you concede so many goals. We have to improve our personal mistakes and collectively take better decisions.”
As you can see, the former Marseille defender is careful not to blame any individuals, even though we’ve seen plenty of goals coming from errors that certainly could be attributed to some players more than others.
But as the captain, Azpi knows it’s his job to lead, and that means taking collective responsibility for the mistakes that are constantly occurring at the back.
