CURVEBAWL FOR BLUES
‘Baseball guy’ Boehly might wonder what he is buying into after sloppy Chelsea again fail to hit a home run
CHELSEA 2 Lukaku 56 pen, 58
WOLVES 2
Trincao 79, Coady 90+7
BY
UP in the posh seats as the baseball guy waited for his £4.25billion cheque to clear, Chelsea stepped up to the plate – and stumbled again.
Prospective owner Todd Boehly looked like a man who thought he was buying a golden bat but, on closer inspection, it was a banana stalk.
And in a defining week at Stamford Bridge, when Boehly’s takeover reaches the smallprint and Chelsea face the curveball of a trip to Leeds before the FA Cup final against Liverpool, skipper Cesar Azpilicueta admitted: “We are putting ourselves in a difficult position.”
In LA Dodgers part-owner Boehly’s baseball jargon, the Blues’ season – which started with so many impressive home runs – has been hijacked by banjo hitters.
Despite Romelu Lukaku’s first Premier League goals of 2022, the late collapse against Wolves made it eight dropped points in their last four home games and they are not even guaranteed a top-three finish.
Azpilicueta, whose blooper at Everton added to the ledger of clangers, said: “We used to be a very solid team, defending together. We didn’t make mistakes.
“Sometimes we have given goals away by ourselves. It’s very disappointing, very frustrating, and we are putting ourselves in a difficult position.
“We shouldn’t be here – we were in a much better position five games ago, but we are here, and now we need to get points if we want to finish in the Champions League places.
“Everything is decided in the last couple of weeks and hopefully we can make it happen all together. We need a last push, we have to push ourselves.
“We have to do it, even if we are all frustrated. We have to pick ourselves up together because we deserve to have a good end to the season. We have not been as sharp as we are normally in the past couple of games, we have so many games in our legs, we have been in so many competitions. But we are Chelsea and this is what we fight for every single season.”
Wolves sub
Trincao and captain Conor
Coady found gaps in Chelsea’s defensive armoury where they had been virtually bulletproof earlier in the season.
But head coach Thomas Tuchel refused to blame the latest meltdown on a hangover from last month’s Champions League heartbreak, and he is in no rush to show Boehly (watching the match, left and above) his plans to orchestrate a recovery.
He said: “I don’t know if it’s my job. I’m the head coach of the team and I have enough to do.
“If he wants my impression, I am happy to give it, but I’m not too sure this is my job and I’m pretty sure he knows what Chelsea is about. Will we talk? I simply don’t know. He’s not officially the owner yet. It makes no sense to talk about it.”
At least Lukaku ( far left), a lumbering bystander for much of his second coming at Chelsea, looked rejuvenated and may have forced his way into the cup final starting XI.
Remarkably, he is now the Blues’ top scorer in all competitions this season and Tuchel says the Belgium target man still has time to show he can be a long-term totem in the side.
“Today he delivered and the next game is on,” added the German. “If you sign for Chelsea and play on this kind of level, it’s not always easy, and it’s not always enjoyable.
“It’s tough, it’s tiring, it’s draining, and that’s what you need to accept – it’s what we demand.”
Up in the gods, Boehly – flanked by business partners E. Adams Miller and Duncan Bagshaw – looked mystified when Ruben Loftus-cheek’s first-half goal was disallowed for offside after VAR official Jarred Gillett’s eternal check.
The offside rule is often confusing for soccerball converts, so let’s simplify it.
If you buy a state-owned energy company for £190million in a rigged auction, and sell it back to the government 10 years later for £10bn, that’s offside and the sanction is a forced sale of your football club. Does that help?