The striker could still thrive at Stamford Bridge with time and love but has not been afforded either in a turbulent campaignThere are games of football that feel like the inevitable product of their circumstances: system against system, the attacking and defensive patterns predetermined days in advance, the result telegraphed from the moment the first ball is kicked. Then there are the games in which Granit Xhaka runs the midfield, a mass brawl breaks out in the closing minutes and Eddie Nketiah scores twice against a team currently sanctioned by the UK government.Chaos, farce, or high entertainment? Probably a mixture of all three. As shirtless Arsenal fans clambered over each other in the Shed End, as a fuming César Azpilicueta...
Liverpool are getting recruitment right, Newcastle have a new hero in Bruno Guimarães and Christian Eriksen can get betterIn the summer of 2020, Liverpool were big favourites to sign Timo Werner from RB Leipzig before the move fell through when Jürgen Klopp could not assure his fellow German of regular first-team football. Liverpool fans have spent the last couple of seasons relieved that the striker chose Chelsea instead, his numbers way down on what they were in the Bundesliga. Werner remains a maddening but intriguing presence. Watch the denouement of the FA Cup semi-final. In the final 10 minutes, he overruns the ball to ruin a fast break, has the energy to get back and halt a Palace counterattack, is...
FA Cup semi-final shows few goalkeepers are more misunderstood than Chelsea’s under-appreciated Senegal internationalIt must be very strange to be Édouard Mendy, a goalkeeper who seems doomed never quite to be centre stage. And when the spotlight does fall on him, it often feels it’s from a strange angle, that he’s not really appreciated for what he’s best at. Goalkeepers perhaps struggle than other positions to be properly understood, but few seem as misunderstood as the Senegal international.In a very slightly different world, one in which Gianluigi Donnarumma had not made a vastly expensive move and saved crucial penalties in shootouts in the semi-final and final of Euro 2020, Mendy would have won a raft of goalkeeping awards last year....
Lose on Sunday and the possibility of bidding farewell to the oligarch with a trophy will be over, and reality will start to biteAs the takeover of the club goes on, Chelsea exist in a curious netherworld, both Roman Abramovich’s club and not. Whatever promises the shortlist of prospective new owners may make now, nobody can be sure what sort of future Chelsea are facing – although fans can be relatively certain whoever comes in will not be pumping in the sort of money Abramovich did.The dream of a third Champions League came to an end on Tuesday, but the lesser prize of the FA Cup remains in reach. Should Chelsea lose to Crystal Palace in Sunday’s semi-final, though, their...
Despite relinquishing his European crown the manic German has shown masterful leadership of his squad and troubled club At 9.50pm on Tuesday Chelsea’s players gathered on the Bernabéu touchline to prepare for extra time, having just beaten Real Madrid 3-1 in their own stadium over 90 minutes: a sensational result in isolation, but with a tinge of dread now too, a sense of having run themselves to a state of exhaustion in pursuit of a retreating mirage.Rodrygo’s goal 10 minutes from the end of normal time will be remembered for Luka Modric’s sublime diagonal pass, a weird, snaking, dipping thing, like an entity from some other physical plane. But the effect of that goal on the opposition was also striking....