Chelsea exit Champions League against Real Madrid: 2023-24 season starts now for Todd Boehly and company

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By Webdesk



LONDON — It has been on the horizon for months, but Chelsea is finally free from the stifling pressure of the stakes. It’s mid-April, there are seven games left in the Premier League and there’s nothing to play for but to avoid the shame of finishing outside the top half. The 2022-2023 season can be hermetically sealed, placed in a time capsule and flung to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Last season, Thomas Tuchel’s side played as many games as any other top club in Europe, reached two national finals and rarely played a non-weighty game. It could be argued that the only games of profound individual performance played on Stamford Bridge soil so far in 2023 are the 16 Champions League first leg against Borussia Dortmund last month and this second 2-0 defeat to Real Madrid in Six days. That is a damning sign of how far Chelsea have fallen. Yet their rapid decline brings with it an opportunity to start over.

A club with an ounce of collective thinking – and the jury is out on whether Chelsea are such a team – would probably appreciate that scrambling up the Premier League serves Frank Lampard’s position in the game more than it does. for the personnel who will succeed him. A team that spent 2022-23 in permanent turmoil now have nearly 20 per cent of a league season to figure out who they really are and who they could be if the point totals are set to zero.

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In the wake of his best performance to date in a tenure that saw four defeats, Lampard was clear that standards will not drop. “You play for Chelsea. So anyway, every game you play, you have to give everything. I don’t let anyone go and we have to show. That standard cannot be lowered.”

The watermark they put on Tuesday may not have been enough to beat Real Madrid, but at least this team showed the outline of something to strive for. Lampard did not solve all the problems that have plagued Chelsea this season in one fell swoop. How could he? There’s still no centre-forward, a very minor shake-up in the final third and question marks over a goalkeeper improving, but nowhere near fast enough to warrant a world record transfer fee and an appropriate salary that make him immutable become. Chelsea may have produced one of their most impressive performances of the season, but they lost this draw for a reason, in both penalty areas they have players who lack Real Madrid’s ruthless qualities. Their passage to the semi-final was secured as Rodrygo charged past Trevoh Chalobah and squared in front of Vinicius Junior before rolling the ball back into the net. His second was even easier, Federico Valverde shot superbly past Thiago Silva before brushing the ball away from Kepa Arrizbalaga. Centimeters from goal with time to hit the ball, it was an opportunity not even a Chelsea player would miss. Probably…

As Logan Roy might put it, they’re just not killers. At least they were fighters who kept course at Stamford Bridge. For the first time in a long time there was aggression against Chelsea with and without the ball. In Tuchel’s dog days and almost every day of Graham Potter, the Blues used possession primarily as a defensive force, creating chances but only when the air was well and truly drilled out of the ball.

There was no such patience to be found in Chelsea’s build-up game in this game. Get ball. Move the ball to the right wing. Make something happen. The hosts moved with a bespoke verticality to mobilize supporters, to turn Stamford Bridge into a fortress that would frighten even Madrid. At least it worked for a while, Reece James’s crosses colliding dangerously in the six yard area. N’Golo Kante might have done better with hooked volleys in both halves, with Marc Cucurella taking a touch too many on both sides and firing straight at Thibaut Courtois.

Critics of Lampard, who has now won none and lost 15 of his last 18 games in football management, could argue that those opportunities should have fallen to the forwards who, apart from Kai Havertz, were nowhere to be found in his starting line-up. But could Chelsea have put as much pressure on Madrid in the final third if it had been Mykahilo Mudryk and Joao Felix up front, rather than Kante and Conor Gallagher? A team devoid of creativity and mutual understanding will rely on winning the ball back high up the pitch if it is ever going to break its barren streak in front of goal.

A new transfer window, a change of coaches and who knows what other external factors bring with it a player staff that requires a very different approach, but at least for the rest of the season Lampard might as well try and stick with this approach. The challenge is to do this while giving the club hierarchy a chance to understand what they actually have in their chaotically curated roster.

Mudryk once again showed that he has speed to burn but a first touch to instill a cozy feeling in the opposing defenders; he needs playing time for Chelsea to know if there is more to him than a flop in the making. The same goes for Noni Madueke and, frankly, even Raheem Sterling. With Christopher Nkunku waiting in the wings, is it worth paying nine figures for Joao Felix just for the number of second strikers and inside left forwards to be pushed to parodic levels?

Then there are the questions about Gallagher and Mason Mount. If Tuesday’s performance is in any way representative of how Chelsea want to play, then perhaps the former deserves more than a transfer weight for the summer. The latter seems tied to the exit door, but is another one that would be ideal for a press-heavy system. It should be a point of pride and principle for Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali — who walked to the home dressing room around 10:30 p.m. UK time, Don’t be put off by the hectic pace of the past few days — that Chelsea finds a way to restore the Mount of the Tuchel era, a homegrown superstar who can excel at any system imaginable.

Call in a manager quickly and many of these questions will answer themselves. If there’s an advantage to having such an inflated squad, it’s that you can trim it down to whatever style you want. Will Chelsea 23-24 be built to exploit the skills of James, so exceptional against Madrid, and Ben Chilwell alongside? Then the team needs midfielders and wide attackers who crush the penalty area. The hierarchy might as well conclude that they want a more cautious, possession-heavy approach based on the qualities of Enzo Fernandez and Mateo Kovacic in midfield. The ingredients are there for that.

Options and time are two things most clubs can never get enough of. Chelsea has an awful lot of both at the moment. That and that alone puts them in a jealous position.





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