Calum McFarlane has warned his struggling Chelsea stars that they must play themselves into his starting lineup for the FA Cup final by impressing against Liverpool this weekend.
The Blues’ Saturday lunchtime trip to Anfield in the Premier League is their only remaining match before they come up against title-chasing Manchester City at Wembley on May 16.
Chelsea’s season is in serious danger of petering out, with Champions League qualification now beyond them barring some help from Aston Villa, and European football at risk of slipping altogether out of the grasp of a team currently sat ninth in the table.
But McFarlane is keen to uphold high standards at the club as he dismissed any suggestion that the Chelsea squad had “downed tools”.
While he insisted on Thursday that Chelsea were not yet thinking about the cup final, he did admit that Wembley places are up for grabs.
“They’re always playing for places,” McFarlane said of his players. “We’ve got a team full of internationals that we can call on. There’s always competition for places at this football club.”
Asked whether he is enjoying his role as Chelsea’s interim head coach, having briefly been caretaker boss earlier in the season, former Under-21s manager McFarlane replied: “It’s a challenge. It’s tough. You don’t like losing, but I’m enjoying and embracing it.”
He said of the Liverpool game: “If we win, I’ll enjoy it. If we lose, just like everyone else, I’ll be frustrated and angry.”
On Monday, Chelsea lost 3-1 to relegation-battling Nottingham Forest’s second string at Stamford Bridge as McFarlane tasted defeat in his first home match in charge.
“You can’t make the mistakes that we did in the first 15 minutes [of the Forest game] at any level,” he said. “We’ve reviewed the game and we’re going to do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“They’re [Liverpool] a really good side with a lot of threats. But we’re focusing on ourselves. We want to turn it around. We know the standards this club have set, we aren’t meeting them at the moment.”
