The lights go out on European football at Stamford Bridge for surely another 18 months at least, and Chelsea depart the stage in a fuzz of mediocrity – caught on the break, the big moments passing them by, clinging to the fragments of small improvements.
When it all came to an end against Real Madrid just before 10pm, the home changing rooms in the east stand must have felt a long way for the venture capitalists up in the hospitality boxes on the opposite side. Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali, and their friend the Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, went there on Saturday to give the players a piece of their mind, and yet by Tuesday it was just another strategy best quietly abandoned.
The issue with that kind of bold move is it leaves you nowhere to go when the problems remain the same. It has taken English football less than a year to chip away at the carefully-cultivated reputation of the new owners at Chelsea as the smartest men in the room. Having lectured the players following Saturday’s defeat by Brighton, they have discovered that all it guarantees is that the stakes get higher. With £600 million spent on the revolution that has seen two managers thrown overboard, and Chelsea diminished in Europe and at home, those stakes are already high.
Next season will likely be just the second in 20 years at Stamford Bridge when there has been no European football of one flavour or another at the stadium. The last time was in the aftermath of Jose Mourinho’s second spell meltdown, after 13 years of dizzying improvement. Chelsea came back to win the Premier League the following season under Antonio Conte and anything is, of course, possible next season. Even so, this rookie ownership is learning some hard lessons.
‘Lampard needs every bit of faith the supporters can spare’
A consolation is that their new temporary manager and his assistant Ashley Cole are bonafide club legends because with a record of four defeats from four games and only a single goal scored, Frank Lampard needs every bit of faith the supporters can spare.
Even Ralf Rangnick’s lamentable interim reign at Manchester United prompted a gentle initial bounce of two wins and two draws from the first four games. As things stand, the Bruno Saltor era – one game, one draw, two weeks hence, overseen by a man who seemed to be managing simply because a clause in his contract insisted upon it – looks like a golden time.
For Lampard this was a sinecure back at the club that once venerated him, a manager’s job that he always felt was given to him and then taken away before he has a chance to get going. It must have looked like a gloriously unlikely second chance. Four games in and he is putting a brave face on it. The consortium guys are at his elbow in the changing room and his old manager Carlo Ancelotti, is looking over with an arched eyebrow and a degree of sympathy.
Ever more Lampard feels like he might be in an impossible position, and the longer it goes on, the interim coach seems less like a shrewd short-term option and more like a human shield.
This is where it gets hard for Boehly and Eghbali. They have swept up a collection of two technical directors and another of the sporting director variety with little sense that the power lies anywhere but with the two Americans. Are they really listening to anyone else? Any sporting director with a genuine authority and an opinion that was sought in moments of crisis would have counselled against that changing room visit on Saturday afternoon.
Chelsea face journey back to where they believe they belong
Lampard’s side were better against Real than they had been at home to Brighton three days earlier, and yet it was a tie that never felt truly in the balance. They created some chances and then, as befits a team that had failed to score in 17 previous games this season, they proceeded not to take any of them. Not since the 1980-81 season – when Chelsea finished 12th in Division Two – have they finished so many games without a goal. They look well on course to surpass that vintage year when they were outscored by Leyton Orient.
A team that does not score goals starts to lack menace, and so Real never looked in discomfort. As a promising first hour faded in a way that felt familiar, Chelsea were picked off. With one game to save the season, Lampard selected a team that had just a single conventional forward in Kai Havertz, chiselled out of this strange collection of footballers.
After the German, Conor Gallagher occupied the highest position up the pitch. Raheem Sterling was not trusted by his manager to start. Mason Mount was inexplicably left out of the side again, and only emerged as a late substitute. It does make you wonder just what might be the temperature of Mount’s contract stand-off. Mykhaylo Mudryk came on for another of those cameos that drift between moments of reckless intensity – a foul on Luka Modric – and shy uncertain finishes that mean he is now 13 games without his first Chelsea goal.
Seventh place might be enough for a Uefa Europa Conference League place and yet Chelsea would have to make up 10 points in seven games, just for a Thursday night tour of all the places in Europe they have long thought they had left behind. It is a long way back.