Gallagher 'gutted' by Champions League loss despite improvement
19 APR 2023
Conor Gallagher feels Chelsea took a step forward in the level of our performance against Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge, but accepts the failure to take our chances in front of goal was to blame following our Champions League exit at the quarter-final stage.
Chelsea took the game to the European champions in west London in the second leg of our quarter-final, but we couldn’t find a way to produce a big Champions League comeback following our 2-0 loss in Spain in the first leg.
That scoreline was repeated in the second match at Stamford Bridge, but it told only part of the story as we controlled large parts of the game and had several chances to take the lead and open the door for a way back into the tie, but were hit on the counter-attack twice in the second half as we began to throw bodies forward in search of a goal.
Overall we managed 13 shots at the Bridge, four more than Real Madrid, but Conor Gallagher felt the difference between the teams came in the chances we failed to take and the clinical way the Spaniards converted theirs, leaving him with mixed feelings about a much-improved showing by the Blues.
‘I feel like we played well, we had a lot of chances,’ said Gallagher. ‘I think we definitely had more and better chances than they did but football is all about taking your chances and we didn’t do that, which was disappointing. Of course, we’re going to be gutted, but we played some good stuff I think.
‘The cutting edge in front of goal is basically what wins you games and we haven’t got that at the minute. It’s definitely a big improvement over our recent performances but you need to score goals to win games. They did that and we didn’t.’
The Academy graduate is trying to focus on the positives of our performance, though, and wasn’t too down about the goals we conceded, which he felt were a natural consequence of the way the game went, as we had no choice but to leave ourselves more open to quick Real Madrid breaks the longer the match went on without a Chelsea goal.
‘We pushed players forward and they were able to catch us on the counter a couple of times, which was the risk. Everybody will be very disappointed but I think there was a lot of improvement in our football over recent performances and I hope the fans can take that away.’
Our exit of from the Champions League in the last eight brings to an end our last prospect of securing silverware in 2022/23, with our only remaining target for the season simply to finish as high up the Premier League table as possible, but Gallagher still sees plenty to play for in the remainder of the campaign.
‘There’s always things to chase,’ added the 23-year-old. ‘We take one game at a time and we just want to improve as a whole team and win as many games as we can for the rest of the season. We’ll take it game by game and hopefully we can build on this performance because I feel like it was positive in a way.’
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