Maresca believes Chelsea deserved more from Bournemouth draw

Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca believed his side deserved more than just a point as their 2-2 draw at home to AFC Bournemouth, which stretched their winless run in the Premier League to five matches.

The Blues made the perfect start to the match, going ahead through Cole Palmer’s fine goal and creating further chances to increase their advantage.

But they surrendered the lead soon after half-time, as Justin Kluivert equalised for Bournemouth from the penalty spot before Antoine Semenyo put the Cherries in front with 20 minutes to go.

Chelsea grabbed an equaliser deep into injury time through Reece James’ fine free kick, his first goal in over two years. But Maresca still thinks his side were worthy of all three points, acknowleging that they were paying the price for not converting their opportunities.

“I think we deserved much more, especially in the first half,” Maresca told TNT Sports.

“For sure, the most important thing is to create chances. It happened many times in the last four or five games. We don’t score and then we concede.

“I think first half we completely deserved to win the game. We should have scored three goals.

“The negative thing is that we changed how we played after conceding. Tonight, after we concede the penalty, we drop a bit, and we need to improve on that.”

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Maresca also thinks David Brooks should have been sent off following his altercation with Marc Cucurella, with the referee awarding the Welshman a yellow card after looking at the incident on the VAR monitor.

On whether he should have had a red, Maresca said: “I think so. Hopefully, we can be more lucky in the future.”

Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola thinks a draw was a fair result, despite his side being minutes away from a first win at Stamford Bridge since 2019.

He told TNT Sports: “I don’t think we deserved to win today and Chelsea were better than us in the first half. We were better in the second half. It was more fair.”

Nevertheless, Iraola criticised the decision to award the free-kick which led to Chelsea’s second goal, believing that there was minimal contact on Joao Felix.

He said: “I am angry because of their equaliser.”

“VAR has to check the free-kick and the point of contact. We played 15 minutes extra today. I am not complaining because of this. I don’t think we deserved to win today.”