Martin Keown singles out Reece James as Liam Rosenior sent Chelsea transfer project warning

Martin Keown has commented on Chelsea's discipline ahead of Wednesday night's clash against Aston Villa

Martin Keown believes that Chelsea will be successful if Liam Rosenior can solve the dressing room's discipline problem. The Blues have been shown nine red cards across all competitions this season, with seven of them coming in the Premier League.

In four of the seven games, Chelsea went on to drop points from either a winning or drawing position. Had the west Londoners held on to the result at the time of the dismissals in each of those four matches, they'd be seven points better off and third in the English top-flight.

In two of the seven games – home and away to Arsenal – the result at the time of the respective red cards was the same at the end of the game, so Chelsea could very well have gone on to turn a draw into a win or a defeat into a draw if they had 11 men on the pitch.

Speaking to football.london ahead of the Blues' clash against Aston Villa on Wednesday night, which will be broadcast on TNT Sports and discovery+, Keown claimed higher-ups at Stamford Bridge need to find the 'right balance'.

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"It's not about young legs everywhere," said the Gunners legend. "It's having that right balance. I think we saw that with the Chelsea teams that are kind of an example of that.

"With their model, they don't want any players that are over a certain age, and I just thought Reece James seemed to be their most experienced playing against us today, and if they had more of those, and maybe there wouldn't be so much ill discipline."

On Sunday night, Pedro Neto became the seventh Chelsea player to be sent off in the Premier League this season. The 25-year-old winger, who will miss the trip to Villa Park, dived into a late tackle on Gabriel Martinelli to stop Arsenal from breaking forward.

Keown said: "He knows he’s on a booking. He knows he's on a booking, doesn't he? I think that sometimes when someone's like outpacing you, that can be an ego one, and he didn't want it on his watch, and he's got to be careful there. He simply wasn't."

On the Blues' discipline, the TNT Sports pundit added: "It's a really fine balance because you want your team to be aggressive and at boiling point, but you don't want to boil over. And I think that they boiled over far too many times.

"Even the player (Neto) wanted to go and have a word with the fourth official, and he walked straight past his manager in doing so. I know the manager didn't want to inflame it, should we say?

"If I'm in charge and you've gone down to the fourth official and you just got sent off. It’s going to inflame me. They’ve got to address that, and if they can get that right, then they can be successful."

Chelsea haven't done themselves, nor Rosenior, any favours and now they're behind in the race for Champions League qualification. The Blues are already six points behind Aston Villa in fourth , and three behind Liverpool in fifth.

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