Inaki Dufour
With a starting eleven that cost them 500 million euros, at home at Stamford Bridge, against Burnley, the penultimate in the standings, even with numerical superiority throughout the second half and the end of the first, Chelsea could not keep the victory , which was leveled twice by their rival (2-2), when they played ten due to the expulsion of the non-existent penalty at the end of half-time.
Chelsea stood up. An unpredictable team. Nothing new in recent times, inside the roller coaster it is taking on this course. Sometimes, he’s happy. Others are afraid. Too much, it creates panic in itself. It is a set at a sidereal distance from what it should be, from the investment it has made, from its recent history and from its goals.
Not Moisés Caicedo or Enzo Fernández or Nico Jackson or Mudryk… Only Cole Palmer. An individuality within a collective. Chelsea delivers a disfigured look. Unreliable. It is a huge problem with a team in rehabilitation, which is still suffering and suffering from the collapse experienced last season, that cannot find a cure. Pochettino is the solution he did last summer. Eight months later, reality is engulfing a team in lower place, eleventh in the table, with two wins in the last seven games.
Europe is an impossible mission. It is 16 points away. Not just because of the distance, but because of his own performance. Burnley, the penultimate team in the English Premier League, showed this in their rivalry at Stamford Bridge. In the beginning, when in the first eight minutes he missed every shot. And then, sometimes, when he equalized they were outnumbered, because of a dismissal Assignon shouldn’t have had in the 44th minute.
His intervention against Mudryk was not a punishment. In the VAR era, a simple contact is enough to get anything wrong. In real football, Assingnon’s hand on the shoulder of the Ukrainian winger (at the same level or worse than his team) seems like nothing more than a throw. Without further ado. For the referee, this is a maximum penalty and a double yellow. A controversial decision that led to the sacking of Kompany, the visiting coach, and Assignon’s disbelief.
Even that wasn’t enough for Chelsea. The penalty was scored with subtlety, Panenka style, by Cole Palmer, the only Blues player to live up to expectations, on the brink of half-time and fell several times against goalkeeper Muric. then (Petrovic also saved some. goals in the other area), the London team exposed its moment of weakness.
At the start of the second half, with Burnley down to ten men due to the aforementioned dismissal, Cullen hit a volley with his right foot from the edge of the area to level the match, just beyond the reach of Petrovic, who then flew over, with the score at 1-1, to stop the threat of 1-2 with Foster’s header already causing more than murmurs in the stands.
Then, Chelsea’s offense grew. A siege in the dark. He didn’t see the pass well, he didn’t identify well in the last meters and, when he did, he finished poorly. This is another of the problems that brings down the London team, without the punch of the great teams with which it wants to compare itself and meet again as soon as possible, but which, in reality, is very far.
But he has Palmer and Sterling. The second, entering the field in the 73rd minute, overflowed his backheel to connect with the leader of Chelsea, signed this summer in Manchester City, putting his left foot in the goal of Burnley (2-1, m 78).
Sentence? Not really. The self-destruction of the ‘blue’ team was even more: three minutes later, with a corner kick, O’Shea equalized the total mismatch of the local defense and the weakness of Petrovic’s hands. The 2-2. No one was surprised. This is the current Chelsea. A disaster. Back and up. Sterling’s header failure was confirmation. And he didn’t beat the crossbar, spitting out Jay Rodríguez’s shot in the 88th minute.
match lineup
28
27
3
8
2
5
twenty
25
fifteen
23
10
49
twenty
22
24
2
33
3. 4
16
17
25
47
Stamford Bridge
Arijanet Muric49
86′
Lorenz Assignontwenty
fifteen’
39′
3. 4′
Vitinho22
Josh Cullen24
46′
47′
19′
Dara O’Shea2
80′
Maxime Esteve33
91′
43′
77′
Jacob Brun Larsen3. 4
Four. five’
72′
Sander Berge16
Lyle Foster17
69′
Four. five’
61′
Zeki Amdouni25
44′
Wilson Odobert47
69′
Replacements
James Trafford1
Charlie Taylor3
44′
86′
Hjalmar Ekdal18
Jack Cork4
Jóhann Gudmundsson7
69′
Josh Brownhill8
Four. five’
72′
Jay Rodriguez9
69′
61′
Benson Manuel10
Mike Tresor31
coach
Mauricio Pochettino
Vincent Kompany
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
