Chelsea fans praise one player for ‘babysitting Cucurella’ in Newcastle win

Chelsea defeated Newcastle 3-2 in what was a tightly contested fixture. Jackson, Palmer and Mudryk scored for the Blues.

The game also marked Marc Cucurella’s return from injury. The Spaniard put in a divisive performance: on one hand, he was energetic and good in one-on-one situations, on another he was at fault for Murphy’s late goal and wasn’t particularly helpful in the build-up.

Chelsea fans on social media have praised Conor Gallagher for helping the left-back.

Johyan: “Conor Gallagher I take my hat off to you today, moved to left wing to stop Cucurella being 2v1 down & his work rate shut down nearly everything down Newcastle’s right & was key to our defensive structure, pressing with energy in the last minutes to”

Dmitry: “I don’t want to be to negative about a hard fought win, but Gallagher spent 70 minutes babysitting Cucurella on the left and he still almost managed to f*** it up.”

Expected Chelsea: “Gallagher’s heat-map today is quite hilarious. Started as our nominal number 10/8 but spent most of his time on the pitch shadowing (or babysitting as the original tweet puts it) Cucurella. One of them makes £70k a week, the other makes £190k.”

The Own Goal: “Anyone who watched the game saw that Gallagher spent most of the 90 mins babysitting Cucurella. It’s hard to impact the game from no. 10 when tou’re trying to stop the other team from scoring.”

Asad Ali: “The one tactical tweak that I really did like from Poch today was that when Poch put Gallagher on the left to help Cucurella because he was getting doubled down and Sterling wasn’t helping track back”