Thibaut Courtois was disappointed with the lack of ‘fighting spirit’ displayed by his Chelsea team-mates in the second half against Roma and insists they have to ‘fight back’ against Manchester United on Sunday. The Belgian goalkeeper saw the ball fly past him three times on a difficult night at the Stadio Olimpico as Stephan El Shaarawy scored twice in the first half before Diego Perotti put the game beyond their reach in the second half.
While the first-half performance was not utterly disastrous, their was a distinct lack of fight among Chelsea players in the second period as they fell tamely to a comfortable defeat. Courtois did not mince his words in the aftermath of the loss and hopes the Blues can prove it was merely an ‘off day’. ‘I think we knew Roma would start with intensity and we had to equal it,’ he told BT Sport. ‘But after 50 seconds, El Shaarawy scores a screamer – it’s unfortunate after 50 seconds you’re down 1-0.
‘I think afterwards we played quite well. We had some chances, we couldn’t score. ‘Then at half-time it was tough but we felt good because I think we played well in the first half. ‘I don’t know why but in the second half we dropped our fighting spirit. We dropped our mentality a bit – that cannot happen, of course.
‘We have to fight back on Sunday now and show the fans that this was an off day and that we will move on and fight on Sunday. ‘It’s hard to say what the problem is, last season every game sometimes I had nothing to do, sometimes I had one to save, sometimes against like Manchester City I had to make four or five saves. This season every game is a hard game for the team, the defence, everybody.
‘We have to find the balance again, we have to find the mentality of keeping clean sheets and not conceding chances, not letting them cross easy and that will be fine. ‘But obviously we have to react on Sunday because today was a bad image of ourselves and we don’t want that to happen again.’
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