Rosenior's tenure ended less than 24 hours after he publicly criticised his players in the wake of Tuesday's defeat at Brighton - an episode that lay at the heart of what ultimately went wrong for the Englishman. It was not for a lack of trying. Rosenior often defended his players, sometimes to his own detriment. His comments about the team "respecting the ball" followed an attempt to justify a pre-match huddle - an idea from his leadership group, rather than Rosenior himself - in which the players encircled referee Paul Tierney before a 1-0 defeat by Newcastle at Stamford Bridge in March. That episode may ultimately define his tenure. It marked the start of a run of five defeats without scoring, Chelsea 's worst such sequence in 114 years, leading to his exit. But there were signs in the early days of Rosenior's short reign that the dressing room were unimpressed with him. Despite relative success at Strasbourg, the former Hull City boss had never managed in the Premier League.…