CARDIFF....1 CHELSEA...2
Out-of-touch Sarri puts Kante and Hazard on bench...but flukes win
The travelling fans’ songs about their own team’s football encapsulated all that needs to be said today about Chelsea, a club without any method and with a deeply uncertain future.
Many are unprintable here and a late comeback, which began with an equaliser which should never have counted, can do nothing to change that.
Cesar Azpilicueta was two yards offside before he headed home on 84 minutes and Cardiff’s indignity was compounded when Antonio Rudiger was not dismissed for hauling down Kenneth Zohore as he ran through on goal at the death. All told, a desperate and unworthy escape from ignominy against a Cardiff side now deep in the mire, five points from safety.
It was an occasion calling out for Chelsea energy and vigour, to keep pace with fourth-placed Manchester United, and yet Maurizio Sarri decided, unfathomably, to leave eden hazard and N’Golo Kante on the bench. The average age of his forwards — all three over 30 — was 31 years and three months.
The modern Premier League requires speed of thought and movement, energy and a dash of youth. Chelsea displayed none. They had been playing football which, the 6-0 annihilation at Manchester City aside, was about as bad as it has been all season until the revival came. For the first time this season, Chelsea’s fans sang: ‘We want Sarri out.’
The man in question had no intention of satisfying them last night. ‘I want to stay,’ the 60-yearold said. ‘I have been on the pitch for the last 45 years, so I know the reaction of the fans. Probably it was better to wait until the end of the match. But, for me, it’s not a big problem.’
It would have helped had he managed to summon an ounce of excitement about the youth at his disposal. Sarri’s admission before this game that he watched only 20 minutes of Callum hudson-Odoi’s sparkling england debut was extraordinary, coming from the leader of a club who don’t want to lose the 18-year-old.
The Italian did not show the remotest inclination to start hudson- Odoi in hazard’s place. Willian conjured occasional flickers of creative menace but there was deep predictability in a side for whom Gonzalo higuain once again looked desperately out of kilter.
The Argentine, who has scored three goals in 11 games since arriving on loan in January, says he is struggling because the ‘physical impact of the defenders here is really very strong’. It stretches the point when Cardiff’s Sean Morrison finds himself enjoying one of his easiest encounters of the season.
Cardiff, who had two good penalty appeals turned down, choked off the creative threat of Jorginho, as all Chelsea’s opponents are now predictably inclined to do. Aron Gunnarsson was the rock of their own resistance. Josh Murphy, down their right, provided the game’s early threat.
Amid the controversy of all that was to follow, the fecklessness with which Chelsea conceded, 49 seconds after the interval, passed almost without comment. Gunnarsson’s long throw was sliced straight back at him by David Luiz, allowing possession to be recycled to harry Arter. his clipped ball from the right was volleyed home sharply by Victor Camarasa, unchallenged by any of the four Chelsea players within a few yards of him.
hazard was on the field in place of Pedro within seven minutes and rapidly revealed the folly of excluding him, though it took assistant referee eddie Smart’s extraordinary oversight to see Chelsea level.
Azpilicueta was two yards offside when Marcos Alonso delivered the flick- on from a corner which the Spaniard headed home.
Warnock’s players, who had defended well, struggled to deal with the hammer blow. When Willian put in a good cross a minute into stoppage time, Olivier Giroud occupied the central defenders and Ruben Loftus-Cheek got ahead of full back Lee Peltier to direct a header past Neil etheridge.
The Zohore episode was a final indignity for a side who travel to Manchester City this week.
Chelsea’s run- in is difficult, including trips to Anfield and Old Trafford, so a top-four berth looks improbable. This is a club whose owner is estranged, whose squad may be temporarily unimprovable if their appeal against a transfer embargo is rejected next week, and whose manager looks deeply out of touch with the times.
In the words of those supporters who travelled here: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’