It was another agonising day at Wembley for Chelsea fans. Another loss in a game they should have won.
The Blues played really well, took advantage of a tired Man City side, and played some great football in attack and defence. Their manager set them up in a smart way, and they created chances – they just couldn’t take them.
Two of their best players were, without doubt, Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah. Gallagher buzzed around in his usual advanced midfield role, winning the ball back in dangerous areas to set up attacks, while also always being on hard to break up City moves in the middle.
Chalobah was a solid presence at the back as always. With no Erling Haaland in the team, his focus was on containing the smart movements of a fluid attacking unit sent out by Pep Guardiola. Alongside the experienced Thiago Silva, Chalobah played a typically cool and collected game in the middle, never looking ruffled when City turned up the heat.
The consequences of mega spend
This should be an exciting moment for fans – a young team with academy players at the heart of it. But according to everything we’ve heard over the last 12 months, those two are among the top candidates to be sold this summer as the club look to start repaying the vast spend on refreshing the squad under the new ownership.
Gallagher has been our best midfielder all season, and Chalobah has been our best defender since returning from injury in the new year. Yet both are up for sale so we can afford to pay off the feckless wet wipes who lacked the conviction to go out there and get us to a trophy.
Imagine what the team (and the scoreline) would have looked like today without them? It’s a painful thought.
How can you say we “should have won” against City???
Did we catch them tired and off their usual stellar form? Yes. Did we miss a couple of chances? Yes. But to say “we should have won” against a side that has proven season after season that they’re in a class of their own is nonsense. Indeed, it’s laughable on its face.
SuperFrank, you keep operating under the delusion that this group are going to turn up one weekend soon and magically transform into a side that deserves to beat a team like City. Thus, your expectations are almost always disappointed (even though we didn’t play all that badly). We lose 1-0 to a FAR SUPERIOR team and you act like our boys are utter failures. It’s as ludicrous as it is destructive! You have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run, and there’s absolutely no reason on Earth to EXPECT this group of young twenty-somethings to beat ONE OF THE BEST TEAMS IN THE WORLD when we have yet to even crack the top 5 in the league. Did we play well enough to make it seem like a victory might have been in reach? Yes, and that should be a source of consolation as much as it is admittedly painful. But if we’re at all honest with ourselves this group were punching above their weight just to make it to another cup semifinal and it was always going to be a monumental task to defeat City. Acting as though it was a match of equals that we “should have won” is pure fantasy.
A realistic appraisal and frankly genuine submission.
You are absolutely spot-on, mate!!
A poor display by Jackson still sulking because he didn’t get to take a penalty, madueke who thought it was funny we lost out both of them. No need to sell Gallagher or challah get rid of some of the other planks like mudrik, sterling, cucerella, give lukaku another chance.
We done excellent against a world class team, now we need a First class Striker who can score Goals.
That’s when we can be winning trophy again.
JRS
No Jackson in first 11, I think more better to win the game. Cause of him without quality and skill make team frustrated even have to many chance. Let give chance to others and only let him in 10/15 minutes before end of game.
Mudryk should try playing up front instead of Jackson. At least Mudryk can run away from defenders to go one on one with goalkeeper or win a free kick ( penalty) or even get a last defender sent off because of his pace showing