When Brentford scored against Chelsea on Saturday their fans went wild, as you’d expect.
But given this was all part of their third win in three game at Stamford Bridge, one would forgive them for feeling like they’ve got our number. But they’re not the only ones.
Chelsea’s home performances have been dreadful for a long time, and it very much feels like a self fulfilling prophecy at this point.
The Blues struggle, the fans get quiet, the team struggles more, the crowd gets restless, the opposition score, it all gets a bit toxic. The fans’ fear is feeding into the players’ fear and vice versa. Manager Mauricio Pochettino touched on this in his comments after the game:
“You need the right way between the fans and the team. The team need to translate the idea of the fans so they can trust them. It works both ways. That is time. We have talented players but we are a new team. We are competing but we are missing things.
“You sense the mood changes when we concede,’ he added. ‘We need to build trust.
“Sometimes you have to accept the game is going in a direction you don’t want. You need to be calm in this moment, and have the character to say ‘okay, it’s in a different direction but we are mature enough to play the way we should’. We will work on it.”
What needs to happen is a sustained run of home wins to get belief back in the crowd and break this damaging spiral. But it’s hard to see how we ever find a run good enough to lift the mood long term.
Forget making Stamford Bridge a positive – we first need to stop it being a negative.
