CHELSEA IN DANGER OF BEING LEFT FAR BEHIND
Forest draw leaves Blues cut adrift from the top four
SOME things are changing in the top four of the Premier League while others are staying the same. Arsenal and Newcastle are the fresh, energetic interlopers while defending champions Manchester City carry the confidence of permanence and reputation.
The very top of the English game currently feels a little new and it feels alive. What it means to clubs like Chelsea is that they simply cannot afford to have many more afternoons like this one if they are not to be left behind.
Graham Potter and his team have won one of their last seven league games and are seven points adrift of fourth place — and 18 behind Arsenal. Potter has been hired to construct a long-term rebuild at Stamford Bridge and should be afforded time to do so.
But Chelsea are eighth now and it will be hard for Potter and new owner Todd Boehly to do the things they want from outside of the Champions League next season, so over the course of the coming weeks, things must improve. Here at an increasingly excited City Ground, there was much to concern them.
Chelsea started brightly, scored through Raheem Sterling and then went on to concede so much ground and momentum to a gutsy, competitive Nottingham Forest team that it was startling. Steve Cooper’s side equalised through Serge Aurier just after the hour and thereafter looked the more likely winner.
Much as they were impressive here, Forest are not a side accustomed to retrieving lost causes in the Premier League. Indeed, Aurier’s was the first goal they had scored on going behind in a league game this season.
Chelsea were far from good enough. After scoring in the 16th minute, they had the opportunity to put a game in which they were dominant to bed. Instead, they managed only one more shot on target and not a single one in a second period Forest dominated.
When Liverpool lost here last October, they did so while missing chances. Chelsea did not. They dropped two big points on account of allowing themselves to simply fizzle out of the game.
Potter carries the look of a man staring at a Christmas jigsaw puzzle without managing to locate the corner pieces that hold the whole thing together. At Brighton, his last club, he took time to find his path. At Chelsea, he will simply have to locate it sooner if he is to survive. It seems unfair to ask a man to take care of the future while also being successful in the present but that’s pretty much the way it is in top flight football.
Before the World Cup break, Potter was experimenting a little with personnel and formations. Here he chose the same team, bar the injured Reece James, that beat Bournemouth last week and the same 4-3-3 formation. For the best part of half an hour it worked.
Chelsea pushed an initially rather passive Forest team back from the moment Kalidou Koulibaly provided Mason Mount with a chance in the second minute and scored just after the quarter hour.
It was a strange goal. Christian Pulisic’s cross to the near post invited a tussle between Kai Havertz and Willy Boly and when the ball deflected up and beyond off the Forest defender it landed on the bar before dropping for Sterling to volley in from six yards.
It was Sterling’s first goal for Chelsea in the league since August and felt like it may set Chelsea on their way. Forest were keen to break but were struggling to do so from inside their own penalty area. However, though Chelsea held a modicum of control on the game for a while, it was not to last.
Forest are always game. Cooper sends them out to be. But they looked short on menace early on.
Brennan Johnson is low on confidence while central striker Taiwo Awoniyi worried Koulibaly with his pace and directness but did not always show sufficient subtlety to go with it. A second Chelsea goal probably would have finished it but Potter’s players didn’t pass the ball well or quickly enough and as the game became fractured and niggly in the second half of the opening period, it suited Forest.
Pulisic did sense an opening in the 43rd minute but shot tamely at Dean Henderson from 12 yards. That would be his team’s final effort on goal of note.
Still in the game at half-time, Forest were terrific thereafter. More assertive in midfield, they regularly turned Chelsea ball over.
Morgan Gibbs-White became the game’s best player and struck the underside of the bar with a thunderclap of a shot in the 53rd minute while Johnson broke down the right to work Kepa Arrizabalaga when a pass left to Awoniyi would have seen the Nigerian with a tap-in.
The goal was to arrive anyway. Havertz only headed a near post corner up in the air and when Boly jumped with requisite desire to nod it down to Aurier he applied a chest control and volleyed finish
that few would have expected from a jobbing full back.
Forest were a team reborn and Potter acted quickly to try and shift the balance. Three 72nd minute substitutes were all attacking and when one, Hakim Ziyech, provided another, Pierre Emerick Aubameyang, with a headed chance the Gabon forward could have won the game with a more assertive far post effort.
But Aubameyang headed weak and wide and looks rather out of step with the requirements of his current club. As indeed does his manager Potter, for now at least.
It’s City up next. Twice.
NOTTINGHAM FOREST (4-3-3): Henderson 6; Aurier 8, Worrell 7, Boly 7, Lodi 6.5; Yates 8, Freuler 7, Mangala 6.5 (Colback 76min 6); Johnson 6 (Surridge 81mins 6.5), Awoniyi 6.5 (Williams 87, 6), GIBBS-WHITE 8.5. Scorer: Aurier 63. Booked: Yates, Lodi. Manager: Steve Cooper 8. CHELSEA (4-3-3): Arrizabalaga 6; Azpilicueta 6, Koulibaly 6, Silva 6, Cucurella 6; Zakaria 6.5 (Kovacic 60, 6), Jorginho 6.5 (Ziyech 72, 6.5), Mount 7 (Gallagher 72, 6); Sterling 6 (Aubameyang 72, 6), Havertz 6.5, Pulisic 6.5 (Chukwuemeka 87). Scorer: Sterling 16. Booked: Azpilicueta, Gallagher. Manager: Graham Potter 6. Referee: Peter Bankes 6. Attendance: 29,229.