Enzo Maresca believes Chelsea "deserved much more" in their thrilling 2-2 draw with Bournemouth.

Chelsea had scored early through Cole Palmer but then true to recent form wasted enough chances to finish Bournemouth before half-time, with Nicolas Jackson striking the post at 1-0 and spurning two further golden opportunities. Bournemouth levelled through Justin Kluivert’s penalty – Moises Caicedo at fault with a needless foul – then Antoine Semenyo made it 2-1 with a stunning strike.

Blues captain Reece James scored a free-kick in the fifth minute of stoppage time to rescue a 2-2 draw for the west Londoners and speaking after the match, Maresca admitted he thought his side deserved to win the game. Asked if it was a fair point by TNT Sports, the Italian said: "I don't think so. I think we deserved much more, especially first half it is a game we could finish 2/3-0 the amount of shots [and] chances but it is football.

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"The negative things is that after we concede the goal, we completely change the way we are playing in terms of we drop a little bit and this is something that we need to improve. But overall I think we completely deserve to win the game and unfortunately we didn't win."

In the second half, Bournemouth endured a nervous wait while referee Robert Jones reviewed pitchside what looked a clear pull of Marc Cucurella’s hair by David Brooks, who could count himself fortunate he was only shown a yellow card. Maresca believes Brooks should have been sent off.

Asked if Bournemouth were lucky to finish the game with 11 players, the former Leicester boss said: "I think so. But this season it already happened not only one time, already many times, even with some penalty, with some... but hopefully we can be more lucky in the future."

He later added: “When there is not intention to take the ball, it’s a red. How can they judge that was not dangerous? In my opinion it’s a red.”

Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola took a different view of the incident, arguing that Jones was right to let Brooks off with a caution. “I don’t understand why the VAR asked the referee to go and check,” he said.

“There was no violence, I think it’s a clear yellow card. For me Brooks never wants to do anything other than stop the counter (attack). When you consider how Chelsea played and we played, I don’t think we deserved to win. I don’t think we were better than Chelsea.”

The result leaves Chelsea in fourth place, three points behind Arsenal who play Tottenham on Wednesday. The Blues could find themselves out of the top four come Wednesday night, however, with Newcastle two points behind them and playing Wolves.