Chelsea are guaranteed to finish in the bottom half of the Premier League for the first time in 27 years following Thursday night’s poor 4-1 defeat at the hands of Manchester United.
Most frustratingly for those in Blue, it didn’t have to be like that. United weren’t great in the first half, leaving too much space that Chelsea were unable to exploit, but were gifted an early goal by poor marking and then took a clinical chance right before half-time. Chelsea then collapsed.
The Blues need the end of the season to come as fast as possible.
Joao Felix 7/10
The fact that Joao Felix was on the pitch for less than half an hour probably helped, but he looked to be the only one of Chelsea’s attacking players that had anything about him. Too many of the rest lacked quality and maybe had the Portuguese been on the from the start he might have been able to take advantage of the space that Manchester United were leaving. He took his goal really well.
Honourable mention
Lewis Hall 6/10
At just 18, Lewis Hall showed up a lot of far more senior and experienced players in the Chelsea team. The young left-back got forward to good effect a few times in the first half and put two excellent crosses into the box that warranted more from his teammates. The downside was that he was nowhere to be seen when Manchester United scored their second goal from his side of the pitch.
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Wesley Fofana 2/10
Wesley Fofana, a player Chelsea paid up to £75m for last summer, seemed to get worse as the game progressed – and it didn’t exactly start well when he allowed Casemiro to ghost into the box unchallenged and head Manchester United into the lead. The way he gave away the penalty was the result of lazy attempt to win the ball, and the fourth goal was entirely his doing with a loose pass.
Dishonourable mention
Kai Havertz 4/10
Kai Havertz missed chances that should have been taken. On one occasion, he fluffed an easy square pass to Conor Gallagher that could have got Chelsea back into it at 1-1, fizzing the ball across the box instead of carefully finding his teammate. On another, he got a header from a very good Lewis Hall so badly wrong that it never even remotely threatened the goal. Low on confidence or not good enough?
