Chelsea goalkeepers: Did Rosenior’s rotation of Sanchez and Jorgensen make the situation worse?

Sanchez can say it was a shame to lose his place, having been in strong form at the end of last season, a run that helped Chelsea qualify for the Champions League and win the Club World Cup.

Chelsea were offered Mike Maignan from Milan in the summer, but felt he was overpriced, and with only one year remaining on his contract, he was unlikely to improve the goalkeeping department to any significant degree, especially given Sanchez’s stable form at the time.

This decision seemed justified for most of the season as Sanchez continued to perform well under Maresca.

However, Rosenior’s arrival coincided with Sanchez’s worst performance of the season: a 3-2 loss to Arsenal in the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final, in which he failed to cut out crosses from a corner kick and open play for the first two goals.

Questions were raised over whether Rosenior – who placed on-loan Chelsea goalkeeper Mike Penders exceptionally high when building from the back at his former club Strasbourg – was bothering Sanchez with his new style. “It’s not about Rob’s build or the way we played,” Rosenior said.

Although he has yet to adopt such an extreme approach at Chelsea, Rosenior has encouraged short passes from the back in some matches – something that suits Jorgensen more than Sanchez.

So far in his Chelsea career, Jorgensen has a passing accuracy of 85.3%, compared to Sanchez’s 70.6% in all competitions.

Sanchez prefers long passes and tries twice every 90 minutes, although Jorgensen has a higher accuracy with long passes when he chooses to play long.

However, Sanchez excels at stopping shots, stopping 7.5 expected goals compared to Jorgensen’s slightly negative score of -0.4.

Since Rosenior’s arrival, Jorgensen’s shot-stopping ability has declined, but he has only played four times, and the rotation provides a strong mitigating factor – perhaps he simply lacks rhythm.

“It’s more about my decision in each match and how I move in this position,” Rosenior said about his rotations between the goal posts.

Having employed Maresca’s tactics in his first month, Rosenior used his two free midweek periods in early February to impose his own ideas on the group after having more successive training sessions.

Unfortunately for Chelsea, they ‘torched the points’, drawing from the winning positions at home to Leeds and Burnley before Sanchez’s error at Arsenal revamped their goalkeeping rotation.

When asked if constantly changing goalkeepers was counterproductive, Rosenior said: “Not for me. If you have a great left-back like Cucurella or Jurel Hato, is it too uncertain for them? I want to compete in every area of ​​the pitch.”

“The only difference with a goalkeeper is that you are one mistake away from this situation.”

However, errors have plagued both goalkeepers – especially Sanchez, who has committed 18 errors resulting in shots and eight errors resulting in goals in 101 appearances – raising questions about whether either is good enough for Chelsea.