With a starting eleven that has cost them 500 million euros, at home in Stamford Bridge, against Burnley, the penultimate in the standings, even with numerical superiority throughout the second half and the end of the first, Chelsea were not capable of keeping the victory, leveled twice by their rival (2-2), when they were playing with ten due to an expulsion in a non-existent penalty on the edge of half-time.
Chelsea was exposed. An unpredictable team. Nothing new in recent times, within the roller coaster that it is moving through in this course. At times, he has fun. Others get scared. Too many, he creates panic in himself. It is a set at a sidereal distance from what it should be, from the investment it has made, from its recent history and from its objective goals.
Neither Moisés Caicedo nor Enzo Fernández nor Nico Jackson nor Mudryk… Only Cole Palmer. An individuality within a collective. Chelsea conveys a disfigured appearance. Not trustworthy. A tremendous problem in a team in rehabilitation, which is still reeling and suffering from the collapse suffered last season, which cannot find a remedy. Pochettino was the solution he resorted to last summer. Eight months later, reality devours a team in lesser places, eleventh in the table, with two wins in the last seven games.
Europe is an impossible mission. It is 16 points away. Not only because of the distance, but also because of his own performance. Burnley, the penultimate team in the English Premier League, showed this a few times in their duel at Stamford Bridge. At the beginning, when in the first eight minutes he beat every shot. And then, at times, when he tied them outnumbered, due to an expulsion that should not have been Assignon in the 44th minute.
His intervention against Mudryk was not a penalty. In the era of VAR, simple contact is enough to not rectify anything. In real football, Assingnon’s hand on the shoulder of the Ukrainian winger (at the same level or worse than his team) seemed nothing more than a throw. Without further ado. For the referee, it was a maximum penalty and a double yellow. A disputed decision that led to the expulsion of Kompany, the visiting coach, and the disbelief of Assignon.
Even that was not enough for Chelsea. The penalty was scored with subtlety, Panenka style, by Cole Palmer, the only player of all the ‘blues’ who lived up to expectations, on the verge of half-time and crashed a few times against goalkeeper Muric before (Petrovic also saved some goals in the other area), the London team exposed its moment of vulnerability.
At the start of the second half, with Burnley ten men due to the aforementioned expulsion, Cullen hit a volley with his right foot from the edge of the area to tie the match, unattainable for Petrovic, who then flew, already with the score at 1-1, to contain the threat of 1-2 in Foster’s header that already caused more than murmurs in the stands.
Afterwards, Chelsea’s offense grew. A siege in the dark. He did not see the pass well, he did not specify it well in the final meters and, when he did, he finished poorly. It is another of the problems that reduce the London team, without the punch of the great teams with which it wants to compare itself and meet again as soon as possible, but which, in reality, are very far away.
But he has Palmer and Sterling. The second, entering the field in the 73rd minute, overflowed with his backheel to connect with the Chelsea leader, signed this summer to Manchester City, who lodged his left foot into the Burnley goal (2-1, m. 78).
Sentence? Not at all. The self-destruction of the ‘blue’ team went even further: three minutes later, on a corner kick, O’Shea equalized between the total mismatch of the local defense and the weakness of Petrovic’s hands. The 2-2. No one was surprised. It is the current Chelsea. A disaster. Back and up. The failure of Sterling’s header was confirmation. And he didn’t miss the crossbar, which spit out Jay Rodríguez’s shot in the 88th minute.
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