Conor Gallagher has apologised to his Chelsea teammates, the club's staff and fans for the red card he was shown in the clash against Leicester City. The 22-year-old tarnished his second successive start under Thomas Tuchel with a 'rash' sending off.
He was shown his first yellow after clipping Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. Just over five minutes later, the Chelsea midfielder was shown a second for a foul on Harvey Barnes after a loose Marc Cucurella pass carved open space for the Foxes winger to run into - Gallagher brought Barnes down to stop the counter-attack and he was duly dismissed.
The Cobham graduate's marching orders is the second successive red card shown to a Chelsea player after Kalidou Koulibaly was sent offer versus Leeds United at Elland Road. The Blues have had to finish another Premier League bout with just ten men but, despite the huge challenge at hand, Tuchel's side waltzed away with three points this week.
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After the game, Gallagher took to Instagram to apologise for his 'rash decision'. He wrote: "Proud of the team for digging deep today and winning with ten men.
"Personally,I want to apologise to my teammates, staff and the fans. I take full responsibility for the rash decision leaving them with a huge challenge for the rest of the game. Thankfully, they came through."
Speaking to football.london in the post-match interview, Tuchel offered his verdict on Gallagher's red card. The Blues boss said: "Today is he is responsible for what he did. Of course, he knows it was a huge mistake. We spoke briefly after the game and things like this can happen.
"It's not purely his fault alone because it's a set-piece for us and it's sloppy how we take set-pieces at the moment. We lack belief and precision. We can speak it out clearly. It’s not good enough how we take set-pieces at the moment and on top of it, we give chances away.
"We are sloppy on the coverage, bad with the decision making how we cover the set-pieces. We have to stop doing this and improve immediately. We are on it with the team and I don’t know why it happened again.
"At the end of this chain is a decision that brings such a huge disadvantage. It’s a very, very bad decision from Conor and, of course, he is upset. Everybody was upset in this moment because it almost kills the whole football match."
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