CHAMPS 1 CHUMPS 0
Doomed mission for Chelsea as they fail to swindle a draw
WELL, it had to happen eventually. Manchester City involved in a game that was not entirely scintillating, and did not have observers leafing through the dictionary for fresh litanies of superlatives.
They still won, though, and are now 18 points clear, so not much else has changed. The title could yet be wrapped up in the first April weekend, an astonishing achievement, this being a league that six clubs, at least, start the season thinking they can win.
One of them, of course, are Chelsea, but they did not play like that yesterday. They did not play like reigning champions, either.
They played like a team who thought they were second best, with no greater ambition than to contain and swindle a draw. It was terribly dispiriting to watch. Chelsea are better than this; or at least they should be.
So the anti-climactic nature of this match wasn’t really Manchester City’s fault. Chelsea came with so little positive spark that this deteriorated into nothing more than a training exercise for long periods.
One Arsenal fan brought a duvet to keep out the cold when City travelled south last Thursday, and their goalkeeper Ederson could have done the same yesterday. Indeed, had he then strung up a hammock between the posts and bedded down for the evening, it really wouldn’t have mattered.
Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso, the full backs, were responsible for Chelsea’s two shots and neither was on target. Eden Hazard was, for 78 minutes, the lone front man, a false nine, yet the service to him was so poor he was forced to come deeper and deeper, becoming a false 10, and on occasions a false eight, too.
Last week it was said he was tired — so why burn him out on this doomed mission? Might Olivier Giroud not have been a better target man? Might Hazard have been spared this excruciating ordeal?
Say what you like about Jose Mourinho, he never sent a Chelsea team out to play like this. He may have been pragmatic on occasions, but he was never so remorselessly shorn of intent.
And if this was how Antonio Conte wished to play, why waste such gifted players? Why bother with Hazard, or Willian, or Pedro or Cesc Fabregas? What did they have to gain from this?
Yes, the illness that deprived him of N’Golo Kante may have interfered with his game plan, but it wasn’t as if it denied Chelsea a great attacking force, making defence the only option. All Kante would have delivered is a better, more solid version of this, the belt to the braces.
City went a goal up 35 seconds after half-time, and it took Conte until the 78th minute to bring a striker on, in Giroud. It was insulting, really, to consider he might think so little of the potential of his own players that he considers this the only way to approach City. Conte may think Pep Guardiola fortunate to have the backing of his board and such a generous transfer budget, but that is no excuse. Chelsea are not Stoke, or some lower-tier inferior.
They were champions last season when City had seven of yesterday’s starters on the staff — albeit Ilkay Gundogan injured and Oleksandr Zinchenko out on loan.
Far worse teams than Chelsea — who had the better of Barcelona at Stamford Bridge recently, and were unlucky to draw, do not forget — have been more adventurous than the champions were here. Bristol City thought bigger in their two EFL Cup semi-finals.
Hazard or Fabregas will not see themselves as inferiors, will not understand being asked to play this way. Withdrawn late in the game, Hazard looked every bit as alienated as he did at Leicester in Mourinho’s last season, and one wonders whether this match could mark a change in his relationship with this manager, too.
Chelsea looked as if they were going through the motions for long spells, shadowing City as they controlled the ball. Opta began measuring passing statistics in season 2003-04; since then, City’s total yesterday, 902, is the most recorded in one match. Yet few looked like piercing the darker blue barrier.
Still, the best team won. It was a scrappy goal, too. Andreas Chris-