INCOMPETENT CHELSEA OPEN DOOR TO MASSACRE
I’m Sarri, I haven’t a clue. Time is surely running out for Chelsea’s manager
MANCHESTER CiTy should win the Premier League. They have the best team and definitely the deepest squad.
And if teams play against them like Chelsea did here then Liverpool should cease to fret and instead begin to congratulate themselves on a creditable and hard fought second place.
City played like champions. Energetic, decisive, merciless and, of course, devastatingly attractive to watch. They scored six — four within the first half an hour — and when they play like this it is hard to think of a side in Europe who could live with them.
But what of Chelsea? Just what was this?
Was it just a bad day at work or a deliberate attempt to rid themselves of their coach, Maurizio Sarri? it is hard to believe it was the latter.
Chelsea have an FA Cup tie at home to Manchester United a week tonight and then the Carabao Cup final against City. if they really are to cut their coach off at the knees then surely they would wait until after those two seasondefining moments?
So we have to put this down to incompetence. We have to presume this was one of those disastrously perfect footballing storms when 11 abysmal performances all arrive at once to form one enormous thunderclap of horror.
if Sarri is to survive the winter at Stamford Bridge then the upturn is going to have to be significant and immediate.
Of the six goals scored by City, four were coloured by Chelsea mistakes. They were big ones, too. All City could do was go back to the well and keep drinking. Sergio Aguero scored a hat-trick — his first an absolute howitzer —and is now City’s all-time leading league goalscorer with 160 goals.
He has scored as many home league goals — six — in the last eight days as Huddersfield Town have all season.
So City are back on top of the Premier League and it is where they deserve to be. Despite the shock that greeted their recent defeat at Newcastle, Pep Guardiola’s team have now won 11 of their last 12 games in all competitions. That is irresistible form.
They had lost at Chelsea in early December but anyone who watched that game will know that Sarri’s team were hanging on in a first half that their opponents dominated. Here, the feel of the early play was similar but this time Chelsea did not hang on. instead, they formed an orderly queue and followed each other over the edge of the cliff.
City are a ruthless, clinical side. if you encourage them they will destroy you and here Chelsea opened the door to a massacre with some embarrassingly compliant football.
The first goal arrived in only the fourth minute and set the tone. Marco Alonso and Eden Hazard appeared to abdicate responsibility for marking Bernardo Silva at a free-kick, allowing the City player to ease forward down the right on to Kevin de Bruyne’s simple pass.
Silva’s cross was only half-cleared and when Raheem Sterling crashed the ball high into the net from 10 yards, the inquest
began. On reflection, it was probably Hazard’s fault.
Aguero then missed a straightforward chance but recovered to drive a blistering shot high into the corner from almost 30 yards with his right. That was 2-0 to City and essentially contest over.
Chelsea still had more to give, though. More to give to City, that is. If they were going to go under they were clearly going to do it properly and when Ross Barkley’s cataclysmic backheader dropped on to Aguero’s foot in the 19th minute he turned to drive it into the goal.
Ilkay Gundogan delivered the fourth goal and it was a nice strike, curled low into the corner with his right instep from 20 yards. But, again, Chelsea were complicit as Antonio Rudiger failed to clear the ball and Barkley appeared to sway out of the way of the shot.
Chelsea were drowning and nobody was exempt. Barkley was lost, and holding midfielder Jorginho was inept. All that remained to be seen was the size of City’s appetite for destruction. Given that goal difference may yet matter, the drop in intensity was only marginal and two more goals arrived in the second half.
Aguero planted a header on to the bar and then scored a penalty after Cesar Azpilicueta felled Sterling. Much mirth will be had when footage of Mike Dean’s dramatic penalty signal spreads on social media but at least the referee was decisive.
Chelsea, frankly, could have done with a bit of Dean’s unshakable confidence but were static again with 10 minutes left. Silva’s pass to Oleksandr Zinchenko opened Sarri’s team up like a tin can and Sterling converted from six yards.
There is never a good way to lose by six but there are different ways. Scorelines can be unbalanced by one team chasing a game, for example. This was not that. Not at all.
This was simply a case of one team being six goals better than the other. In a game between Manchester City and Chelsea. Remarkable.