Three players need to grow up fast and stop this unhealthy habit holding back Chelsea | OneFootball

Former Premier League goalkeeper Paul Robinson criticised the attitude and demeanour of Chelsea’s players after they lost 2-0 to Ipswich on Monday night.

A spiky game spilled over at full time, when there were scraps between a few different players.

“The Chelsea players are still moaning on the pitch, there’s still petulance,” the former Spurs goalkeeper said on 5 Live.

He’s actually not the first pundit to use that word this year – Carlton Cole used it to describe the scenes at Stamford Bridge back in April when players bickered over who would get to take a penalty in the 6-0 destruction of Everton.

For all that we’ve seen improvements in the team and the dressing room character since then, there are still huge issues that need to be sorted out, and this is without doubt one of them. We like to see a bit of fight and fire – but on the pitch during the game, not in scraps after full time.

Chelsea must grow up fast to stop discipline problems hurting their season

Marc Cucurella red card.

There is a lot of youthful energy in this group, but the sheer number of yellow cards they pick up and the incidents like this show it needs to be better directed.

Marc Cucurella, Enzo Fernandez, Nicolas Jackson – all of them are far too happy to get drawn into running battles with opposition players which are far more distracting than they are useful.

They’re not the only culprits, of course. But they’re repeated offenders. There’s been a lot of talk about this young group “maturing,” and despite good results in the last couple of months, Monday night was a good reminder that we’re a long way from being finished.

In this case it was just a bad look – but you only have to go back a couple of games to see Cucurella being set off for action after full time.