Chelsea 2-2 Ipswich (Tuanzebe 46′ OG, Sancho 79′ | Enciso 19′, Johnson 31′)
STAMFORD BRIDGE — However much they denied it, Chelsea’s season only ever had one meaningful aim.
“No one from the club asked me to compete for a Champions League spot”, Enzo Maresca claimed last August, in what would become the party line for six months.
Yet by mid-February, that was whittled down to qualification being a target “within two years, not one”.
Eight days later, Maresca admitted he had ordered every member of staff to the Cobham canteen for a 10am meeting in January. The only order of business? “Push until the end of the season, because our target was to bring this club back to the Champions League”. There it is.
And yet after a dire draw with Ipswich Town, a third season outside Europe’s premier competition feels increasingly inevitable. Two dropped points means qualification is no longer within their control. Newcastle have a game in hand, Manchester City have much softer fixtures, and Aston Villa have form and Unai Emery. Even Fulham closing the six-point gap is not unimaginable.
Any suggestion Chelsea are about to launch some inspired clamber towards glory feels somewhere between fanciful and downright delusional. Every week they somehow appear less sure of themselves, as if attempting to discover any semblance of a meaningful identity is only dragging them further away, gradually breaking piece by piece. Every answer only brings more questions.
Three clean sheets in four league matches coming into Sunday suggested a facade of defensive solidity, shattered within 31 minutes by a Brighton loanee and a right-back played out of position.
This was supposed to be a prime opportunity for Cole Palmer to rediscover his former self, only for him to appear further from that ethereal brilliance than any day of his senior career. There were moments he appeared unsure of quite how to kick a football, attempting these odd, bobbling swipes, like a drunk trying to boot a pigeon.
In the bigger picture, Chelsea are without an away league win since 8 December last year, an eight-match run, and haven’t scored in a first half since 24 February, also eight games in all competitions. In the reverse fixtures for their six remaining league matches, they earned six points, including only one win. Repeating that could force them out of the top seven.
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The paradoxical reality is the more Chelsea want and need Champions League football, the less prepared they are for it, and the less good it appears it would do for them.
An estimated minimum £50m in prize money and gate receipts would help in theory, but creative accountants and a seemingly endless willingness to spend somewhat undermines the value of that income. The reputational boost might help attracting certain players, but that doesn’t seem to have presented much of an issue so far.
Yet this squad is stretched to breaking point trying to balance the Conference League with standard duties, and that’s without meaningful progress in either domestic cup. There’s a fair argument that for the £1.3bn spent under BlueCo, upgrades or reinforcements would be required in almost every position to make Chelsea competitive in the Champions League. And that’s only if some of those bring experience, in violation of the current transfer policy.
Somewhere in all this is the reality that between the fifth spot and the relative weaknesses of every team in contention bar Liverpool, Champions League qualification has never been more easily achieved. Given the sheer volume of money sequestered in this squad, missing the club’s sole aim should be unforgivable.
But the underperformance and inexperience is so widespread there is an odd sense that almost everyone in the club, from Maresca to the sporting directors to the owners, are protected by virtue of not knowing where to start in assigning blame. And so it goes on, with a new aim to just fall short of next season.
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