Tribal Football

Shamrock Rovers manager Bradley says he is not basing his standards on their Chelsea loss

Ansser Sadiq
Shamrock Rovers manager Bradley says he is not basing his standards on their Chelsea loss
Shamrock Rovers manager Bradley says he is not basing his standards on their Chelsea lossAction Plus
Shamrock Rovers head coach Stephen Bradley aimed to maintain balance on his post-match analysis on Thursday.

The Irish club were beaten 5-1 by Chelsea, who had a team full of youth and reserve team stars.

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However, the two clubs have a huge disparity in resources, with the Blues’ squad worth north of a billion pounds.

“As a club, and as a team, we’re not basing our standards against Chelsea, let’s be clear about that,” said Bradley. 

“You know when you come to places like this against this level of opposition you’ve got to be faultless in your performance.”

“Considering that our league season has been over for a month and we’ve had some key games in between that in this competition, the players have done extremely well to get 11 points,” he added. 

“The aim was always to try and come here with the points in the bag because we know how difficult this was going to be. We would have taken that before the competition.

“You cannot give them the goals we gave them in the first half. You can accept moments of quality that are going to hurt you, that’s normal against this level. But you can’t give them the goals we gave them and then try compete in the game.

“You can see that we haven’t been playing competitive games on a regular basis. You lose that mental sharpness, seeing the little balls around corners and the penetrating passes. It’s them little bits you only get playing competitive football on a regular basis.”