“Home crowd made it difficult”: Chelsea boss happy with Chilwell and Fofana’s performances vs ex-club Leicester City

Graham Potter on Wesley Fofana and Ben Chilwell’s performances for Chelsea vs Leicester City

Graham Potter highlighted Wesly Fofana and Ben Chilwell’s contributions to Chelsea’s 3-1 Premier League victory over Leicester City on Saturday.

In a convincing victory over the Foxes and as they achieved their third consecutive win for the first time this year, Potter was all praise for his team. The Blues carried over the same performance against Leicester after their 2-0 second-leg triumph in the Champions League against Borussia Dortmund.

When Chilwell gave Chelsea the lead, the Blues came within one goal of increasing their advantage twice through Joao Felix, who hit the woodwork and had his goal later ruled offside.

While Felix was unfortunate, it was a great match for Mykhaylo Mudryk who got his first assist in a Blues jersey when he set up Mateo Kovacic for the team’s final goal of the day.

And today’s performance surely impressed Potter, who spoke to the BBC and Ben Chilwell and Wesley Fofana for ignoring the noise from the fans at the King Power Stadium and putting in strong performances.

“Ben answered it in the perfect way. It was one of those games where the home crowd made it difficult, but they handled it well. It wasn’t a straightforward game; Leicester had chances and we had to suffer, but that will get better as we keep going.”

Fofana joined us from Leicester City last summer for a fee of 75million Pounds with add-ons. He has since had injury issues but whenever he has been on the field, he has been impressive. This was the first time he faced the Foxes in his career.

Chilwell, in that regard, is a bit more experienced. The 26-year-old has played against Leicester six times in Chelsea colours, scoring once, assisting another, and winning four of those matches since his 50million-Pound move to SW6 in the summer of 2020.

It was expected that Leicester fans would jeer Fofana and Chilwell. The former especially given the circumstance he left the Foxes in at a time they were gunning to be a major force in England. But this is a part and parcel of football, and the two defenders maintained their composure to put in a very solid display.

When Thiago Silva got injured, there were concerns about his replacement. Fofana, Kalidou Koulibaly, and Benoît Badiashile, however, have done an outstanding job at the back in the former AC Milan star’s absence.

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Chilwell, who recently returned from injury, has had an immediate impact, while Marc Cucurella, who is currently playing centre defence, has been good as well. And the fact that we have only let up four goals in our last five games shows just how brilliant our defence has been.