After our first west London derby of the season ended goalless on Wednesday night, Graham Potter was accepting of the result.
Though the Blues came on stronger towards the end of the match than at any point earlier, Brentford had matched us for shots on target and provided an aerial threat to our goal, something the Chelsea head coach acknowledged after the final whistle.
‘Over the course of the game a point was fair,’ Potter said.
‘They had chances, we had chances, we pushed to the end and probably were more likely at the end to score but at the same time, over the course of the game, a point was about right.
‘Brentford make it very difficult for you to control. They do what they do really well, use the front two, use set pieces, long throws, long balls into the box that you have to deal with and make it unstable.
‘So not easy but the positives are a clean sheet and a point. That's four points in two away matches, which is positive and when we did control it, we did it quite well. It's a point and we have to move on.’
The coach started 21-year-old Armando Broja at the spearhead of the attack and brought 18-year-old Carney Chukwuemeka on among his second-half subs…
‘We saw with two or three actions in the first half what Armando’s about,’ Potter said, ‘which is he can attack space when there's big space behind, he can give you that possibility.
Brentford press high and they leave space behind so we could use him.
‘We did it two or three times, we wanted to do it a little bit more than we did but I thought he did okay for his first start. Because it’s his first, we thought 60 minutes is about the maximum for him. Overall we are happy with him.
‘If you look at Carney’s attributes he is a big powerful boy that can run, and run away from people.
‘In a game like Brentford you're often in duels and you need physicality and he and Christian Pulisic did well when they came on, they affected the game.
‘Carney's a young player but he's got exciting attributes. We just need to help him reach his potential which is exciting.’
Potter explained why Conor Gallagher come off only 15 minutes into the game…
‘He just felt ill, like he was going be sick. We saw that he wasn't quite himself. Hopefully it's just a 24-hour thing but it affected him,’