'I'm sorry': World Cup winner says he simply wasn't good enough when he was playing for Chelsea
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Chelsea have had their fair share of transfer flops over the years.
Mykhaylo Mudryk has been criticised since joining Chelsea, Romelu Lukaku was a flop at Chelsea, while Fernando Torres and Andriy Shevchenko were both seriously underwhelming at Stamford Bridge too.
However, before Torres, Shevchenko, Mudryk and Lukaku, one of the first big-name players to fail to live up to expectations at Chelsea was Emmanuel Petit.
Petit was a top player for Arsenal in the 1990s, and he returned to the Premier League with Chelsea in 2001.
Petit regretted leaving Arsenal, and he jumped at the chance to come back to England with Chelsea.
However, that spell didn't quite go to plan, and speaking on Peter Crouch's podcast, Petit has now apologised to Chelsea fans for his underwhelming performances at Stamford Bridge.
Emmanuel Petit apologises to Chelsea fans
Petit shared a heartfelt apology to the Chelsea supporters 20 years on from his spell in west London.
The World Cup winner says he tried his best to help Chelsea, but due to his age, he simply couldn't do it.
"I just want to say to the fans that I’m sorry about that, especially the Chelsea fans, because I think they were expecting the Emmanuel Petit, the Gunners, you know, same way, the style of playing on the pitch. I was older, I was tired, my body was cracking. I tried to give always 100% on the pitch when I was playing, but I couldn’t.
I think the first year was good, but after I started to have many injuries, and I had an impact on my body, on my mind, and I couldn’t manage to come back at a proper level that the fans were expecting me to be. So that’s why I want to tell them I’m sorry about that."
What happened to Emmanuel Petit at Chelsea?
Petit apologised for his performances at Chelsea, but, ultimately, he doesn't have much to be sorry for.
The midfielder wasn't at his best at that time, but that wasn't due to a lack of effort or a lack of professionalism.
The reality is that Petit was in his 30s when he joined Chelsea off the back of a long and gruelling career, and injuries caught up with him.
Petit even said that his knee was a mess on The Locker Room Podcast a few years ago, via The Mirror,
“I really didn’t like the way it ended in the dressing room, with the medical staff and the president [Abramovich] at Chelsea," Petit said.
“I was even disgusted. That’s why I left and didn’t give them any news about me after that. My performances had been suffering because my knee was a mess, but I put things off. I hid the truth from the medical staff. I still had the hunger.”
Petit didn't fail Chelsea and their fans, his body failed him, and, sadly, there's not much you can do about that.
Petit was eventually replaced by his fellow countryman, Claude Makelele, at Stamford Bridge, and Chelsea would go on to be wildly successful in the Abramovich era.
