Lamela: "We left everything on the pitch"

Erik Lamela summed up the feeling of the players at Stamford Bridge when he said: “I can look at my team-mates and we are proud of each other.”

It was the Bridge of sighs for us again as we took Chelsea all the way in the Carabao Cup semi-final, second leg only to lose out on penalties.

Leading 1-0 from the first leg, goals from N’Golo Kante and Eden Hazard midway through the first half turned the tie around for the Blues and had us rocking.

A change of formation for the second half as Mauricio Pochettino switched to 3-4-3 worked as we came storming back and levelled the tie on aggregate at 2-2 when Fernando Llorente headed home Danny Rose's cross.

Chances came and went for both teams after that as the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge crackled.

The aggregate score stayed at 2-2, the tie went to penalties and Chelsea took it 4-2 after Eric Dier and Lucas Moura missed from the spot.

“The final result is bad for us but we fought until the end, we showed that we wanted to win,” said Erik.

“The game was very hard. We ran, we played, we didn’t lose overall and then penalties, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That’s not an excuse. It’s like this. You win or you lose. The most important thing is to give everything on the pitch and I can look at my team-mates and we are proud of each other.

“Penalties... like I said, against Watford (in the third round) we won, tonight we lost. It’s like this. We are all together. I scored my goal but I could have missed as well. That’s football. The most important thing is that we left everything on the pitch.

“The season is long and we need to move on. It’s another game in three days (FA Cup at Palace on Sunday) and the season isn’t finished. We’re out of this competition, that’s hard for us but we need to keep going forward, always.”