Reece James points finger at Chelsea teammates amid worrying trend 'we need to cut out'

Reece James has bemoaned Chelsea's defending following a disappointing result against Qarabag in the UEFA Champions League. The Blues were held to a 2-2 draw by the Azerbaijani outfit at the Tofiq Bahramov Stadium on Wednesday night, falling to 12th in the table.

Estevao Willian broke the deadlock inside the opening quarter of an hour, but the west Londoners' lead didn't last long. Leandro Andrade equalised for Qarabag on the half-hour mark, pouncing on a rebound inside the box.

Then, shortly before the break, Marko Jankovic put Gurban Gurbanov's side ahead, beating Robert Sanchez from 12 yards. Qarabag were awarded the penalty after the ball struck Jorrel Hato's arm from close range.

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Alejandro Garnacho managed to pull one back at the start of the second-half, but Chelsea couldn't find a third. Speaking on TNT Sports after the game, James delivered a brutally honest assessment of the game.

"Disappointing to sum up," said the Blues captain. "Coming here, we wanted to win. We felt that we set up strong, but we made two errors that led to a penalty and a goal that we gifted them, and then to get back into the game is difficult.

"Their fans were quite good tonight. The pitch was difficult to play, but this is something we expected and didn't quite adapt to."

On letting Qarabag back into the game, James said: "Two mistakes led to two goals, and it's difficult when the momentum in the game changes, and we simply didn't do enough. We had a few chances we didn't take and we only have ourselves to blame.

"If you look at the goals that we have conceded, they haven't been from amazing play, more our mistakes, and that is something we need to cut out."

And, finally, on Estevao, who was named the man of the match, James added: "He is an amazing player. He has the world at his feet. Obviously he is still so young, so we need to protect him and keep him healthy. He has a lot of development still to come but we are super happy with him here."

Speaking to reporters after the game, Maresca echoed James' thoughts. The Chelsea boss said: "The intention is always, you know, when we make changes, is because the intention is always, because we think that the plan with the players that they start against is the correct one.

"I think today, I don't know, the feeling that it's about, you know, is more, because we start in the right way, we score the goal and then, again, we concede two goals, especially in the first one with 10 players.

"So, for me the big difference today has been, especially in the second box, in our box, we concede two goals that we can avoid and in their box, for the amount of times that we are there, probably we can be more clinical."

Maresca added: "The goal we conceded, they are silly goals for me. In their box, for the amount of times that we arrived, we have not been clinical enough. So this is the big difference for me."