Cesc Fàbregas has criticised the attitude and behaviour of him and his team-mates in the wake of Chelsea’s alarming slide down the Premier League table.
The Londoners plunged to their ninth league defeat of the season on Monday, losing 2-1 at leaders Leicester City to slip to fifth from bottom.
“We will all have to take our responsibility. If you are a big player, and paid like a big player, you must play like a big player and behave like a big player,” Fàbregas told a Facebook question and answer session.
“I am not saying you can’t have a bad season and bad games. We all have big players and small players but the attitude must be spot on.
"We must always be at the top of our games, even when it's not, and the behaviour has to be better than what we are seeing right now from every single Chelsea player."
The Spain midfielder refused to blame the squad’s problems on a lack of self-belief.
“Confidence is important until a certain point,” said Fàbregas. “At the end of the day, as a player you have pride.
“We cannot win the Premier League right now but we must do better. Right now is not the time to think of where we might finish, we’ve been saying it almost all season.
Play my best
“I don’t think about anything apart from wanting to beat Sunderland [on Saturday], play my best and that’s it,” added Fàbregas. “Right now no one is easy [for us]. We’ve put ourselves in this position and we must now prove that we can start winning.”
Fabregas's former Arsenal team-mate Thierry Henry also took part in the question and answer session and the Frenchman believes the blame for Chelsea's form should be directed more at the players than at manager José Mourinho.
“It seems like it’s difficult for them and yes, you can have a go at the boss, but I also think you can have a massive go at the players,” said Henry. “It is time for the players to be professional about it, where is your pride?
“With the quality in that team . . . how can you not beat Bournemouth, Crystal Palace – and it’s no disrespect to any of those teams – at your place?” added Henry.
On the Chelsea website Mourinho identified the problems at both ends of the pitch which led him to talk of “betrayal” after Monday night’s defeat.
The under-fire manager explained that he had warned his players about the threat posed by table-topping Leicester’s fast-moving strike force.
“I worked for four days on this match,” he told the Chelsea website. “I prepared everything related to the opposition. I identified four movements where they score almost all of their goals.
“My players got all that information and training in the last three days. From the four types of situation I identified, we conceded the first and the second goal. I think they listened and they are good enough, but the mistakes were there.”
Attacking players
Mourinho said Chelsea also had a problem with the number of goals their attacking players are scoring. “When we make defensive mistakes, we are punished because we don’t score enough goals,” he said. “The team pays for the number of goals our attacking players aren’t scoring.”
