If you’ve misplaced three video games in a row any win is an efficient win. And there’s no such factor as a nasty win by 4 targets. However equally, the context is unavoidable. This can be a Southampton facet who’re doomed, who’re letting in 2.41 targets per sport, who’ve misplaced 14 of their previous 17 league video games and who don’t have anything to play for this season past attempting to scrape collectively the three factors that will take them above Derby’s file low of 11. The Premier League’s USP is meant to be that anyone can beat anyone, but it surely’s exhausting to sq. that with this Southampton.
No win may be taken without any consideration, however equally there’s not an enormous quantity of credit score to be gained in beating Southampton. Comfy as this victory was, it was unlikely to do a lot to assuage the irritation of some followers.
Round 150 had demonstrated on Fulham Highway towards the possession earlier than kick-off, attacking Todd Boehly and Clearlake and demanding success. ‘We’re not Arsenal,’ blazed one hand-written poster, whereas others chanted the names of Roman Abramovich and José Mourinho. But outcomes are solely a part of the difficulty.
Had they crushed Everton three days earlier than Christmas, Chelsea would have gone high of the desk. Since then, they’d received simply two of 10 video games earlier than Southampton got here to Stamford Bridge. Whether or not it was honest or not, there was a way that they’d been elevated to a false place by a spell of unsustainably glorious kind from Cole Palmer. The 22 12 months previous didn’t have a nasty sport on Tuesday, however there have been two first-half probabilities he would most likely have transformed in November that went begging.
This, although, felt far larger than kind. That is about the best way soccer goes, the disconnect between followers and membership, the sense {that a} membership that was as soon as integral to and consultant of its neighborhood is now simply an funding car, the gamers belongings to be traded as required.
It’s true that discontent can be much less seen had been Chelsea engaged in a battle for the title, but it surely doesn’t take many poor outcomes to show the sense of business soullessness slightly below the floor. The downturn over the previous couple of months is partly right down to issues of workforce constructing when so many gamers have are available in and the underlying plan is tough to discern.
Accidents clearly are a part of the difficulty. Wesley Fofana, Roméo Lavia and Nicolas Jackson signify the backbone of the facet, and dropping them has created knock-on points elsewhere. Jackson will not be as efficient towards low blocks as he’s with area to run into, however he’s a centre-forward. With out him and Marc Guiu, Chelsea don’t have a pure quantity 9, which at a time when they’re additionally with out the width provided by Noni Madueke with a thigh harm and Mykhailo Mudryk after his optimistic medicine check, that has pressured an entire rethink of the ahead line.
Pedro Neto, naturally a large participant, has needed to be drafted in as a central ahead, whereas Christopher Nkunku, a intelligent and ingenious inside-forward in his goalscoring days at RB Leipzig, has been repurposed as a large participant on the left. There was a specific amount of frustration – amongst followers at the very least – about his sometimes erratic motion, however he’s being requested to carry out a task that doesn’t come naturally to him and that, given how Marc Cucurella likes to invert, is crucial.
It’s telling of the best way the fashionable Chelsea are run that Nkunku, who was solely signed in June 2023, seems like a part of the membership’s previous. He formally joined per week earlier than Mauricio Pochettino was appointed supervisor, scored three in 5 pre-season video games after which was injured earlier than the marketing campaign started for actual. Since then, Chelsea have signed 25 gamers; if Nkunku feels this isn’t fairly the membership he was bought, he can hardly be blamed.
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Nonetheless, nonetheless uncomfortable he at occasions appears on the touchline, his goalscoring instincts stay sharp as he demonstrated after 24 minutes, stealing in entrance of Will Smallbone and braving contact with a flailing Aaron Ramsdale to nod in Tosin Adarabioyo’s header.
It was then with a extra typical run infield that he arrange the second, gathering Cucurella’s move and slipping in Neto to hammer in a second. Not for the primary time this season, Southampton had given their opponents a serving to hand, James Bree squandering possession. Levi Colwill headed a 3rd simply earlier than half-time.
Thereafter, it was only a case of taking part in out an especially simple win, augmented by a breakaway purpose from Cucurella.
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