Sanchez can argue he was unfortunate to lose his place, having been in strong form at the end of last season – a run that helped Chelsea qualify for the Champions League and win the Club World Cup.
Chelsea were offered AC Milan’s Mike Maignan in the summer but felt he was overpriced, with only one year left on his contract, and unlikely to improve the goalkeeping department to a significant degree, particularly given Sanchez’s stable form at the time.
That decision looked justified for much of the season as Sanchez continued to perform well under Maresca.
However, Rosenior’s arrival coincided with Sanchez’s poorest display of the campaign: a 3-2 defeat by Arsenal in the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final, where he failed to cut out crosses from a corner and open play for the opening two goals.
Questions were raised over whether Rosenior – who positioned Chelsea loanee goalkeeper Mike Penders exceptionally high when building from the back at his former club Strasbourg – was unsettling Sanchez with his new approach. “It’s nothing to do with Rob’s build, or the way that we played,” Rosenior said.
Although he has not yet adopted such an extreme approach at Chelsea, Rosenior has encouraged shorter passing from the back in certain matches – something that suits Jorgensen more than Sanchez.
So far in their Chelsea careers, Jorgensen has a pass accuracy of 85.3%, compared with Sanchez’s 70.6% across all competitions.
Sanchez prefers long passes and attempts twice as many per 90 minutes, although Jorgensen has a higher long‑pass accuracy when he opts to play long.
Yet Sanchez is superior at shot-stopping, having prevented 7.5 expected goals compared with Jorgensen’s slightly negative balance of -0.4.
Since Rosenior’s arrival, Jorgensen’s shot-stopping has declined, but he has only played four times, and rotation provides a strong mitigating factor – he may simply lack rhythm.
“It’s more about my decision for each game and in which way I go in that position,” Rosenior said of his rotations between the posts.
Having used Maresca’s tactics in his first month, Rosenior used the two free midweeks in early February to push his own ideas on the group after gaining more consecutive training sessions.
Unfortunately for Chelsea, they then “set fire to points”, drawing from winning positions at home to Leeds and Burnley before Sanchez’s mistake at Arsenal triggered the renewed goalkeeper rotation.
When asked whether constantly changing goalkeepers is counter-productive, Rosenior said: “Not for me. If you’ve got two outstanding left-backs like Cucurella or Jorrel Hato, is it uncertainty for them? I want competition in every area of the pitch.
“The only difference with a goalkeeper is you’re one mistake away from this situation.”
Mistakes, however, have plagued both goalkeepers – particularly Sanchez, who has made 18 errors leading to shots and eight leading to goals in 101 matches – raising the question of whether either is truly good enough for Chelsea.
