Chelsea 0-2 Brentford (Azpilicuta og 37′, Mbeumo 78′)
STAMFORD BRIDGE — Five games, five losses, one goal, no hope. Frank Lampard’s caretaker role is venturing into hospice care, overseeing what appears to be the ever-more rapid terminal decline of a modern footballing institution.
There was no more fittingly drab way for Chelsea to begin their season’s afterlife than against another side wedged in purgatory, albeit much happier to be there.
Brentford had nothing to play for except a pride they have long earned, yet dispatched the Blues with a clinical nonchalance. Thomas Frank’s Bees have now won both their Premier League games at Stamford Bridge by a margin of six goals to one.
Identifying the side which have spent a league-low on transfers from the one which had plundered an all-time high would have been nigh-on impossible to the naked eye. Chelsea’s starting XI had scored just 10 league goals between them this season, nine less than Ivan Toney.
Prevailing wisdom suggested all Chelsea could now salvage from this season was to thoroughly assess their incoherent infantry of overpaid underperformers, decide who should stay and who should go, now.
Lampard clearly disagreed.
Tapping into his rich vein of bemusing choices since readmittance to the West London clinic for the narcissistically gifted, just three injury-enforced changes were made from the Real Madrid defeat eight days prior. Only three of this season’s 13 signings made the starting XI, with seven of those players over 25.
This was Lampard’s stoic admittance that he will not let his second Chelsea stint become a training exercise, that he intends to go down with this ship and make a subaquatic home of the wreckage. Even Frank admitted after the game that the home line-up, with Raheem Sterling as a sole striker flanked by N’Golo Kante and Conor Gallagher, came as a surprise.
No player better exemplified this failed push for consistency and security than Cesar Azpilicueta. Much like his caretaker manager, the captain’s impeccable service to Chelsea continues to earn him more leeway than his performances merit, yet he was exposed once again by the Bees.
Azpilicueta’s own goal was perhaps as much down to bad luck as poor positioning, helpfully diverting Mathias Jorgensen’s glancing header goalwards, but he offered little at either end in Chelsea’s crucial right wing-back spot.
With Kante and Gallagher again employed as purveyors of chaos in an untraditional and frankly unsuited attacking pivot, the burden of creativity fell once again on the wing-backs.
Yet while Ben Chilwell at the very least threatened to threaten down the left, Azpilicueta firing a cross into the opposing stand moments after the Brentford goal demonstrated his incompatibility in an attacking role.
Reece James’ injury somehow leaves Azpilicueta as Chelsea’s only right-sided defender with two functioning legs. The Spaniard will likely have to continue until the end of the season, unless Lampard repeats Graham Potter’s old trick of utilising Ruben Loftus-Cheek, or even Christian Pulisic, down the right. That a much-loved veteran, again like his current boss, has been placed in a position they are clearly not fit to execute by a club which owes them a huge debt is a damning indictment of both dreadful squad planning and patent disrespect for the club’s history.
Without a shot until the 21st -minute, he opening gambit seemed to confirm this game’s role as a distant relative to the evening’s top billing in Manchester, a second-cousin-thrice-removed to a match that actually mattered. It was uncertain from the off whether either team would even try to score, let alone actually manage it.
Kante’s ambitious effort deflecting into the Matthew Harding Stand appeared to remind Chelsea they could even try to add to the Lampard era’s singular goal, inspiring a series of efforts closer to the corner flag than the last.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mykhailo Mudryk replaced Azpilicueta and Gallagher at half-time, only to remind Chelsea fans that perhaps a true striker is not the panacea they believe it to be. Afforded a series of glorious opportunities, the enigmatic Gabonese fired his shots everywhere but into David Raya’s goal.
Despite the improved effort from the home side, Bryan Mbuemo’s smart finish from a smooth counter-attack still had an inevitable feel, latching onto Shandon Baptiste’s through-ball.
Chelsea are now winless in eight games, with their 30 goals in 32 league games a 99-year-low. The home support’s sole remaining hope is that somewhere, Mauricio Pochettino was watching along and tutting, silently plotting how he will halt the seemingly interminable.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/65pTELa
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