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Arsenal legend Paul Merson was “impressed” by Sunderland when they beat Chelsea on Saturday, while he urged the Blues to bring in some experience.
Chelsea Alejandro opened the scoring after just four minutes on Saturday but Wilson-Isadore soon canceled out the effort on 22 minutes.
With the game seemingly heading for a draw, Camsdine Talby popped up in the third minute of second-half injury time to give Sunderland all three points.
The result saw Chelsea drop to eighth in the table ahead of Sunday’s fixture and left Merson frustrated with Mark Giv’s introduction to the Blues.
Merson said Sky Sports: “Very impressed with Sunderland today, I wasn’t with Chelsea.
“I thought they would struggle. They need Delp badly, they need a focal point.
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“Guo played up front and I think he touched the ball nine, 10 times. You can’t do that in a team that is supposed to dominate the ball.
“Chelsea ran out of ideas. They had winger after winger but half of them go to nobody. Joao Pedro looked lost as a number ten. They were struggling and very poor.”
Merson added: “The team is very young. The oldest player there is 23, 24?
“When you’ve got a young team, you’re up and down, they’ve got wingers who are very inconsistent.
“It’s not 7/10s all the way, it’s eight, nine or five. They can’t win the Premier League like that.
“They need a bit of experience there. They miss Thiago Silva with their experience and that’s their problem.
“They’re just going up and down, down and down. Hopefully they can get top four, but they’ve got to be better than that.”
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When asked about Joao Pedro’s performance, Chelsea boss Enzo Marisca said: “I think Joao is not training every day because he is managing a little bit on his own with the injury problem.
“Moi (Cacedo) is exactly the same, Enzo (Fernandez) is exactly the same. We have four or five players who, unfortunately, because of some problems, they cannot work every day and they try to play the game.
“So in some games Joao has been better, today he struggled a bit. But today I think overall all the players struggled today, so it’s not just about Joao.”
When asked about his side’s displays in general, Mariska added: “I think in general we weren’t that good. When you’re not that good in the Premier League we know it can be a bad result.
“The second goal that we acknowledged, I’ve said many times before, is that when you’re not able to win, it’s important that you don’t lose.
“But even then, it’s not a transition because when you’re open or 1v1, it’s just a long ball. We’re 2v1 with two central defenders and we didn’t defend properly.
“The first goal came from a throw-in. Again, it’s hard to deal with because they bring six, seven, eight players inside the box, so it’s difficult. But overall, I think we weren’t good enough.”
