Chelsea’s 6-0 defeat away to Man City whilst shocking, was perhaps not as surprising as it should have been. A drubbing like that had been on the cards and in some respects the 4-0 defeat away to Bournemouth a few weeks before had set the scene.
Much of the shock to Chelsea supporters is down to the context around such a humiliating defeat. They are simply not used to it. The last time Chelsea shipped six goals or more was in 1991 in a 7-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest.
That was in the old Division One, before the Premier League began to rampage all over football and long before Roman Abramovich’s cash propelled Chelsea in to the European elite.
Many of us simply believed that those good old, bad old days had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Given that context, it is also unsurprising that the blame for the defeat has been heaped upon Maurizio Sarri and the players.
In the last few months of his tenure at Chelsea, Antonio Conte, after an abject 1-0 defeat away to City where Chelsea set up with 11 players behind the ball in the hope of avoiding a thrashing, argued spikily that he was not so stupid to play an open game against City and lose 3-0 or 4-0.
After losing 6-0 it appears that either Sarri is stupid or incredibly stubborn in sticking to his Sarri-ball philosophy and failing to adapt to the threat that City posed. Little surprise then that the knives were clearly out for him in the aftermath of the defeat against City.
Football these days is a results business and had Chelsea’s defeat to City been a one off, then perhaps it may have been brushed off as an outlier; merely evidence of teething trouble as the players and supporters adapt to a different way of playing. Short-term pain for long-term gain if you like.
But with poor performances and heavy defeats away to Spurs, Arsenal and Bournemouth prior to the defeat against City, it seems more serious than teething trouble. A pattern is developing while the performances are getting worse, certainly since the encouraging start to the season.