Fired-up Forest dent Chelsea’s top-four hopes
SOME things are changing in the Premier League top four, while others stay the same. Arsenal and Newcastle are the fresh, energetic interlopers. Manchester City still carry the confidence of defending champions.
What this means for clubs like Chelsea is they simply can’t afford to have many more afternoons like this if they are not to be left behind.
Graham Potter’s team have won one of their last seven league games now and are seven points adrift of fourth place — 18 behind Arsenal. Potter has been hired to construct a long-term rebuild and should be afforded time to do that. 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 the Champions League next season. So, over the course of the coming weeks, things must improve. Here at the City Ground, there was much to concern them.
They now face Manchester City at home on Thursday before taking on the same opponents in the FA Cup third round three days later.
Delivering a withering assessment of his players, Potter said: ‘The performance level was not good enough. When the game was controlled in the first half we didn’t do well enough, and in the second half when it was uncontrolled, we suffered.
‘We had a chance through PierreEmerick Aubameyang at the end and we rallied later in the second half but it would have been unfair if we’d taken more than a point.’
Chelsea started brightly, scored through Raheem Sterling, and then conceded so much ground to a gutsy Forest team it was startling. Steve Cooper’s side equalised through Serge Aurier just after the hour and looked the more likely winners in the end.
Much as they impressed here, Forest are not accustomed to retrieving lost causes. Indeed, Aurier’s was the first goal they had scored after going behind in a league game this season.
So Chelsea were far from good enough. After scoring in the 16th minute, they had the opportunity to put a game they were dominating to bed. Instead, they managed only one more shot on target and not a single one in a second half Forest dominated.
Potter has the look of a man staring at a Christmas jigsaw puzzle without managing to locate the corner pieces that hold it all together. At Brighton, he took time to find his path. At Chelsea, he will 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 how it is in top flight football.
Before the World Cup break, Potter experimented 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 passive Forest back from the moment Kalidou Koulibaly provided Mason Mount with a chance in the second minute.
They scored just after the quarter hour. Christian Pulisic’s cross to the near post invited a tussle between Kai Havertz and Willy Boly and, when the ball deflected up off the Forest defender, it landed on the crossbar before dropping for Sterling to volley in from six yards.
A second goal probably would have finished it but Potter’s players didn’t pass the ball well or quickly enough and, as proceedings became fractured and niggly, it suited Forest. Pulisic did sense an opening in the 43rd minute but shot tamely at Dean Henderson from 12 yards. That was to be their final effort on goal of note.
Still in the game at half-time, Forest were terrific thereafter. More assertive in midfield, they turned Chelsea ball over with regularity.
Morgan Gibbs-White struck the underside of the bar with a thunderous shot in the 53rd minute, while Brennan Johnson broke down the right to work Kepa Arrizabalaga when a pass to Taiowo Awoniyi would have seen the Nigerian with a tap-in.
The goal was to arrive anyway. Havertz could only head a near-post corner up in the air and, when Boly jumped to nod it down to Aurier, he controlled and volleyed home.
‘It was a good reference point that we can play against the big teams in the league,’ said Cooper. ‘We’re in control of our destiny and we have to keep building.’
Potter made three attacking changes and when Hakim Ziyech provided Aubameyang with a headed chance, the forward should have done far better. Aubameyang looks rather out of step with the requirements at Chelsea. As does Potter, for now at least.
NOTTM FOREST (4-3-3): Henderson 6; Aurier 8, Worrell 7, Boly 7, Lodi 6; Yates 8, Freuler 7, Mangala 6 (Colback 76); Johnson 6 (Surridge 81), Awoniyi 6 (Williams 87), Gibbs-White 8. Subs not used: Cook, Hennessey, O’Brien, Toffolo, Dennis, McKenna. Booked: Yates, Lodi. CHELSEA (4-3-3): Arrizabalaga 6; Azpilicueta 6, Koulibaly 6, Silva 6, Cucurella 6; Zakaria 6 (Kovacic 60), Jorginho 6 (Ziyech 72), Mount 7 (Gallagher 72); Sterling 6 (Aubameyang 72), Havertz 6, Pulisic 6 (Chukwuemeka 87). Subs not used: Bettinelli, Chalobah, Hutchinson, Hall. Booked: Azpilicueta, Gallagher. Man of the match: Morgan Gibbs-White. Referee: Peter Bankes. Attendance: 29,229.