CHELSEA PUT ON PRO SHOW
Boro are despatched as Blues stars display no sign of crisis
THEY were singing and dancing in the streets around the King’s Road as Chelsea again made a mockery of the club’s problems to ease into the last four of the FA Cup. With just over 600 visiting fans inside the Riverside, having bought their tickets before sanctions shut down business, this was TV heaven for the vast majority of Chelsea followers forced to watch their football on the box.
With Romelu Lukaku and birthday boy Hakim Ziyech firing them into a two-goal lead inside half an hour, the stay-at-homes were celebrating yet another semi-final appearance before they’d even ordered their Saturday night takeaways.
And while Chelsea’s attempt to have this tie played behind closed doors was deservedly mocked, there will have been one or two Boro supporters who wished this had been a fans-free zone.
Some taunted the club with chants of “We’re going to have a party when Chelsea die” but the truth is that on the pitch, they’re very much alive.
Chriswilder’s promotion-chasing team had turned their home into a fortress with nine successive wins.
Yet it was breached with ease by a Chelsea side whose only defeat in the past two months has been against Liverpool in the EFL Cup final.
Thomas Tuchel deserves enormous credit and this latest test was navigated with surprising ease considering Boro’s earlier conquests.
It may have been a free hit for the hosts but Chelsea had too much quality to allow them to feed off the electric atmosphere inside the packed ground at kick-off.
Wilder has admitted that had Manchester United converted a fraction of the countless chances they created against his side in the fourth round, there would have been no Cup adventure for Boro.
Chelsea too started like an express train and should have been ahead inside 10 minutes.
Both Lukaku and Christian Pulisic were unable to get on the end of a dangerous Mason Mount cross which Dael Fry failed to cut out.
And after Ruben Loftus-cheek had glided past two opponents to feed Pulisic, the American’s cross shot was hacked clear.
When Matt Crooks badly overhit a cross with Folarin Balogun unmarked in the middle, it fuelled suspicions that Boro were suffering a nasty dose of stagefright.
And the manner in which they allowed Lukaku to bag his third FA Cup goal this season did nothing to banish them.
Ziyech sent the elusive Mount scampering down the right flank, his low ball in eluded Fry again and this time, the Belgian had read his team-mate’s intentions perfectly to stab home from close range.
It may have been a stuttering start by the hosts but nowilder side goes down without a fight.
Though they looked incapable of exposing Chelsea in open play, they did threaten from set-pieces.
But Ziyech, moments later, effectively put the game beyond the Championship play-off hopefuls, celebrating his 29th birthday with the visitors second.
Taking Mount’s pass he cut inside Neil Taylor before unleashing a shot, which despite its swerve, should probably have been kept out by Joe Lumley.
Boro did have moments in the second half but never did it feel as if the comeback was on.
Tuchel, who continues to show his quality on a weekly basis in difficult, unprecedented circumstances.
It would have been so easy for the German to allow the announcement of sanctions on Abramovich to distract his squad and subsequently affect results.
But he has now overseen four straight wins since that news broke to keep Chelsea on track in three different competitions.
A run on Premier League glory looks unlikely given the form of Manchester City and Liverpool, but the Blues remain in contention for the Champions League and, thanks to victory here, the FA Cup.
And that is largely down to a manager whose fingerprints were all over a win that saw the visitors quickly silence a raucous home crowd with a trademark form of controlled and clinical football.
That identity has persevered despite a recent shift to a back four that was once again on display here and has brought about no discernible drop-off in solidity.
It certainly hasn’t harmed the attack, either, as Romelu Lukaku and Hakim Ziyech proved in putting the cap on fluid moves to clinch progression to the semi-finals.
We do not yet know which of the many consortiums taking part in the battle to control the west London club’s future is likely to be successful.
Yet what seems obvious is that any new owners are unlikely to run Chelsea in the manner that has allowed £1.5bn of debt to Abramovich to accumulate over the last 20 years as trophies have been hoovered up.
And in such circumstances, it would be easy to see why the uber-competitive Tuchel might believe his best chances of silverware lay elsewhere going forward.
But for now, the 48-year-old remains committed to navigating Chelsea through the choppy waters of their transition to a post-abramovich world.