We plainly did not have energy for the fight in the opening stages. I mean we were completely waxed. It's a good point and to argue otherwise is foolish. Chelsea just has to lose a couple games, go off the boil. They are sh!t-hot right now, as evidenced by their last game. Can't-do-anything-wrong mode.
Completely, simply can't recover fully both mentally and physically. Worth noting that Bournemouth ran an additional 9K to our players (and with 10 men for 15 minutes). We got a goal and Bournemouth got jittery. I believe its now 10 days to a PL match, so plenty of time to recover and get 9 points from next 3 games before the big one at Chelsea
Alongside the fact we have better players and as Ash says, they'd been pressing (and covering a considerable additional distance) for the whole game
I don't really see how it's that hard to fathom that an additional 24 hrs rest, especially over a congested period of football, must be of considerable benefit.
This is really quite simple. They had more energy at the start of the game and came at us hard, covering more ground and reaping the rewards. However, as they inevitably tired to match our level of f*ckedness, the superiority of our players and depth of our squad told and we got back into the game.