Maybe the best summation of Chelsea so far is via the Peter Drury commentary at the end of the game at Tottenham. The Blues had just turned over Spurs in North London, and the man in charge of the Premier League World feed commentary didn’t speak much afterwards. There were barely ten words after the fulltime whistle that preceded ‘Spurs, nil, Chelsea, three’. That’s kind of where we are now, that it all seems very routine. Chelsea are good, can we please talk about something else?
It says a lot about the quality of the side and the quality of the manager Thomas Tuchel that less than ten months into his stewardship, the brilliance and efficiency of this team has become workaday. Like The Flash running fast, or a Christopher Nolan movie about the concept of time. Yeah, well, what else is new.
And as such, you can use language like ‘turn over Tottenham’ despite the fact that the hosts were on the front foot for much of the second half, and probably should have scored. You can say stuff ‘making lightwork of Aston Villa’ even though Villa would have felt aggrieved to have lost by that many. Words like ‘comfortable resistance’ can be used to depict their draw at Anfield, despite spending the entire second half on the back foot. Resistance is futile. Rattling them is pointless. A lot of what is being done against Chelsea is defeating defiance, the kind that’s commendable, but patronising.
In many ways, the Blues are a variation of the Empire in Star Wars, and at the same time, its Death Star. Capable of morale-shattering destruction in such a short period of time – they took 13 second half minutes to render Spurs’ impressive first half as academic – and the window of opportunity to hurt them is so small. Except, in this case, hurting them causes little implosion, and barely leaves a mark. They’re the Empire’s refined and improved Death Star, one with fail-safes and an uncanny ability to adapt.
As such, watching much of Spurs’ first half was as much about dread as it was impression. If not more. A sense of ‘this is a good display’ was definitely being enveloped by a sense of ‘they’ll pay for not making the most of it’. Nine times out of ten, that Spurs first-half would have had them sitting pretty at halftime; sadly, the Blues are that tenth time. Chelsea are like a character in a series, kill them in Episode Three, or by the third season, they’re taking charge and consolidating their superiority.
So, when Thiago Silva headed in Marcos Alonso’s corner early in the second half, it was more inevitable than surprising. It’s kind of moment in which, if you rooted for Tottenham, your angst is mixed with a sense of ‘I told you so’. And when Ngolo Kante’s shot trickled in off the feet of Eric Dier and the post, it was done and dusted. Power had been gained, and then consolidated.
So, as Chelsea host Manchester City this weekend, it’s case of the Premier League champions meeting up against a side that only finished fourth the previous. But if anything, it feels like Chelsea are the former, if City don’t necessarily feel like the latter.
There’s no probably no greater evidence of Chelsea’s improvement in 2021 than Manchester City. Tuchel’s side have played the champions three times since he arrived, and not only has he won all three, he’s rattled Pep Guardiola in all of them. In that trio of games, City have adopted two holding midfielders, one holding midfielder, and no holding midfielder. They’ve deployed different styles, and it’s still led to the same result; and for a manager like Pep who has a reputation for overcooking the broth, this is pretty much his worst Groundhog Day.
Chelsea are joint-top with Liverpool, with an identical record in every facet that matters in the embryonic league season. But one quality they have is the ability to hurt you from anywhere, via anyone. Asides Romelu Lukaku, no other player has scored more than once, but they’ve registered 14 goals, showing a diversity in threat. Not to mention how they possess the pretty much the best in-game tactician in the Premier League right now.
There won’t be many cases in which the team that finished as champions in three of the past four seasons will clearly be second favourites against the team that hasn’t finished above third place in that same time frame. But such is the evolution and improvement of Chelsea at this point, that if they walked the game against City, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.
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