• Capital One Cup

Benitez refuses to blame blunder boy Ivanovic

ESPN staff
January 9, 2013

Rafael Benitez opted not to blame Branislav Ivanovic or the officials for Chelsea's Capital One Cup semi-final first leg defeat to Swansea, insisting his team have to take their chances.

Ivanovic made two big errors to allow Michu and Danny Graham to set up a significant lead for the Swans to defend in the second leg on home soil.

The Chelsea defender was robbed of the ball for the first goal and then blindly passed to Graham for the second, but Benitez preferred to focus on his belief that Chelsea were the better side.

"It isn't important who makes the mistakes. The important thing for me was the team was doing really well," Benitez told Sky Sports. "There were a lot of chances, we made two mistakes and we paid for them.

"The team was attacking and creating chances. We made two mistakes and conceded two goals. It's something in football that can happen. If we play this game ten times, we will win nine of them."

Demba Ba, on for the ineffective Fernando Torres, had a penalty appeal waved away in injury-time at 1-0, and then saw a goal chalked off for a dubious offside decision. Benitez disagreed with both, but insisted Chelsea are not out of the tie.

"I saw the replay and he was level so it was a goal for me," the Spaniard said. "We can argue about the penalty or not, but obviously it was not a yellow card - that was clear for me.

"With Fernando and him (Ba), we have chances. We can score goals, we had 23 attempts and a lot of them very clear attempts. If we score, everything will change."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Close

ABOUT COOKIES

To help make this website better, to improve and personalize your experience and for advertising purposes, are you happy to accept cookies and other technologies.

More Info Here Cookie Choices