Graham Potter admits Chelsea’s performance ‘wasn’t good enough’ following ‘hard-earned’ draw with Nottingham Forest

Chelsea “wasn’t good enough” but scraped a “hard-earned point”, according to Graham Potter following the Blues’ 1-1 draw with Nottingham Forest on Sunday.

Raheem Sterling opened the scoring for Chelsea in the 16th minute, but a second-half Serge Aurier effort just after the hour mark helped Forest earn a deserved point.

“In the end, it’s a hard-earned point against a team that’s set up well,” Potter told Sky Sports after the game. “I think credit to them, they used the atmosphere, and certainly, the second half put us under a lot of pressure in the first part of the second half.

“Our performance level wasn’t good enough I don’t think to take the three points, when we had control of the game we didn’t move the ball fast enough, and then when we lost control of the game we suffered a bit.

“We rallied it up a bit in the second part of the second half, and Pierre [Emerick Aubameyang] has a good chance at the end, but I think it would have been unfair to take the three points.”

Potter didn’t think Chelsea did enough in the periods they controlled the game.

“When we had control of the game we didn’t do enough with that, we didn’t move the ball fast enough and have enough movement, and when the game became uncontrolled, we suffered with the duals and struggled to deal with that aspect of the game.

“In the end, it’s a tough game, as much as we can be critical of ourselves, Nottingham Forest played a good game as well.

“But we’re disappointed with our performance level over the course of the 90 minutes and can say we didn’t deserve to win the game.”

The draw leaves Chelsea in eighth place, seven points adrift of Manchester United in fourth. When asked about the top four battle, Potter said Chelsea still had a “long way to go”.

“For us it’s about the next game and trying to improve, we’ve got a long way to go in terms of the way we want the team to look, and the performance level, so for us I think it would be a mistake for us to worry about what can happen in five months time, we need to focus on the next match and get our performance level better and more consistent and that’s the process, that’s what we have to do.”