Liam Rosenior has criticised referee Paul Tierney for interfering with Chelsea’s pre-match team huddle around the centre circle before their 1-0 defeat against Newcastle at Stamford Bridge.
In surreal scenes shortly before kick-off on Saturday, the Chelsea players repeated their new ritual of huddling around the match ball and around Tierney, who declined to leave the centre circle as TV cameras panned around, with Cole Palmer jokingly hugging the official before captain Reece James appeared to tell his teammate to stop.
After the match, which was settled in Newcastle’s favour by Anthony Gordon’s goal in the 18th minute, an exasperated Rosenior was in no mood to laugh about the incident.
“I’m disappointed,” the head coach said when asked about Tierney’s presence in the Chelsea huddle. “There’s more focus and emphasis on the things that don’t matter.
“I’m going to make it really clear. I want to protect my players. I’m respectful to the game. My players made the decision that they wanted to be around the ball, to respect the ball and show unity and leadership. That is not my decision. That was a decision between the leadership group and the team.
“There is nothing that they’re doing with that huddle that is disrespectful to the opposition. We had a meeting with the referee (before the match), my assistant goes in, the first thing he talks about is our huddle. He talks about when I complained about Arsenal being in our half.
“It wasn’t the goalkeeper coach that was in our half. People who were at that game for Arsenal know why I said what I said. We’re not being disrespectful to the opposition.
“If Paul (Tierney) had focused more on his job, which was to make the right decision, we have a penalty today. I don’t think anybody in this room can say that (Nick) Woltemade doesn’t kick Cole Palmer down in the box. So, let’s focus on the things that are important. My team showing unity is not as important as getting the decisions right on the pitch.”
Chelsea debuted their new centre circle huddle during a 4-1 away win over Aston Villa earlier this month. As well as demonstrating team unity, it has also proven very effective at winding up opposition players and supporters, though Paris Saint-Germain raised no objection to it during the first leg of their Champions League round-of-16 tie at Parc des Princes on Wednesday.
Rosenior also revealed that he will be contacting Professional Game Match Officials Limited to get a better understanding of why Tierney objected to the huddle.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t speak to Paul today or his officials,” Chelsea’s head coach added. “I thought it wasn’t the right thing to do. But I’ll be speaking to PGMOL. I’ll be speaking to the refs and just trying to get an understanding of why that happened.”