Gary Neville says he has ‘got some sympathy’ for Robert Sanchez and believes Enzo Maresca should have pulled the Chelsea goalkeeper out of the firing line earlier in the season.
Sanchez held off competition from Djordje Petrovic to nail down his spot as Chelsea’s number one at the start of the campaign following Maresca’s arrival as head coach.
But the 27-year-old has appeared far from comfortable between the sticks, making a number of costly mistakes in recent months, with the Blues at risk of dropping out of the Premier League top four.
In the wake of Sanchez’s less-than-convincing display Chelsea’s 3-1 defeat to Manchester City, Maresca finally decided to drop the error-prone Spaniard from his starting XI.
Summer signing Filip Jorgensen was instead given the nod against West Ham and continues his run in the side this evening, with Maresca’s men looking to exact revenge on Brighton after their FA Cup defeat to the Seagulls just a week earlier.
Asked whether Jorgensen could be the answer for Chelsea, ex-Manchester United and England defender Neville said on Sky Sports: ‘It’s too early to say maybe and it’s very early in his career as well.
‘I think when you get into that position as a manager when you’re starting to question your goalkeeper… it’s the most difficult position in football, I believe.
‘I don’t believe there is any tougher role on the pitch and the minute you make a mistake the pressure comes on you.
‘As a young goalkeeper, at a big club like Chelsea, it’s tough. I’ve got some sympathy for Sanchez and I hope that Jorgensen does well.
‘On Sanchez, I thought he was left it for too long in the end. I thought he could have been just brought out earlier.
‘It’s now a case where it’s difficult to get him back in because that confidence breaks as a goalkeeper. How do you build it back up? It can take along time.’
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Neville fears Maresca will be faced with an ‘even bigger problem’ should Jorgensen experience similar problems to Sanchez in the second half of the season.
‘It’s very early in Jorgensen’s career and I hope that he has a really good couple of months in front of him,’ he added.
‘If he doesn’t, all of a sudden Chelsea have got an even bigger problem and so does Maresca.’
In the week, Maresca confirmed that he now viewed Jorgensen as his first-choice shot-stopper, telling reporters: ‘Our goalkeeper at the moment is Filip Jorgensen.
‘I said that the Filip solution was also to give Robert Sanchez time to recover mentally and physically but the idea is not to game by game change the ‘keeper.’
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