"You always want your players to stay, but there are exceptional circumstances where you can understand what he did. I knew it would be better for him personally, I felt. He did not do it meaning disrespect to the club or to the team, but I feel he's very, very down and that's the only issue.
"His confidence is not at the highest at the moment. He was very down at half-time and he felt guilty. I took him off because he was too down to come back.
The Boss added:
"At the moment we are of course short because we lost Lauren for the rest of the season and Ashley Cole is not back, Kolo and Eboue are away, Sol is not well. We are short at the back and we have to stick together and defend a little bit more everywhere else on the pitch and go through that patch."
"Overall, commitment was right, the quality of our game was right and we succumbed to, basically, mistakes that can of course happen in football."