Gary Cahill says Chelsea’s players are behind under fire manager, Rafa Benitez.
The Stamford Bridge faithful may be refusing to forgive Rafa for the way he treated Chelsea during his time as manager of Liverpool.
But the fact is that few of Chelsea’s current players were even at the club when the Reds and Blues were major rivals.
And it is probably to Benitez’s credit that Liverpool were even slugging it out with the billionaire Blues at that stage anyway.
And so Chelsea’s contemporary squad have rallied behind Benitez, according to England defender Cahill.
He says that the way the Blues fought back to stave off a shock FA Cup defeat against Brentford at the weekend proved their loyalty to Benitez.
Had theyfallen to the minnows like Rafa’s previous club did, the Spaniard would have had tough questions to answer back at the Bridge.
But his players showed him the support that has not been forthcoming from the stands, giving Rafa a second bite at the FA Cup cherry.
"The character we showed in the second half shows we're playing for the manager," Cahill said in the Daily Mirror.
"He's under a lot of pressure from the fans, but we have grated out a result in horrible conditions.
"The first half wasn't good. We could blame the pitch and that we couldn't see anything in the sunshine. But we shouldn't as we were really sloppy and off the pace."
