LONDON -- It has been on the horizon for months now, but at long last Chelsea are free from the suffocating pressure of stakes. It is mid-April, there are seven games left in the Premier League and nothing more to play for than avoiding the ignominy of finishing outside the top half. The 2022-23 season can be hermetically sealed, placed in a time capsule and hurled to the bottom of the Mariana trench.
Last season, Thomas Tuchel's side played as many games as any top club in Europe, reaching two domestic finals, rarely playing a game that did not carry some profound weight. One might make the case that the only matches of profound individual performance to be played on Stamford Bridge soil so far in 2023 have been the second leg Champions League round of 16 against Borussia Dortmund last month and this second 2-0 loss to Real Madrid in six days. That is a damning sign of how far Chelsea have fallen. Still, their rapid decline brings with it an opportunity to begin anew.
A club with an iota of joined-up thinking -- and the jury is out as to whether Chelsea are such a team -- would probably appreciate that scrambling up the Premier League has rather more utility for Frank Lampard's standing in the game than it does for the staff who will succeed him. A team that has spent 2022-23 in permanent turmoil now has nearly 20 percent of a league season to find out something about who they really are and who they might be when the points totals are reset to zero.
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In the afterglow of his best performance yet in a tenure that has brought four defeats from four, Lampard was clear that standards will not slip. "You're playing for Chelsea. So regardless, every game you play you have to give everything. I won't let anyone off the hook and we have to show. That standard cannot drop."
The watermark they set Tuesday might not have been enough to overcome Real Madrid but this team at least showed the outline of something to strive towards. Lampard did not solve all the problems that have bedeviled Chelsea this season in one fell swoop. How could he? There is still no center forward, precious little bedevilment in the final third and questions marks over a goalkeeper who is improving but nowhere near fast enough to justify a world record transfer fee and commensurate salary that has made him unshiftable. Chelsea might have delivered one of their most impressive performances of the season but they lost this tie for a reason, in both penalty areas they have players who lack the ruthless qualities of Real Madrid. Their passage to the semifinals was secured when Rodrygo burst beyond Trevoh Chalobah, squaring for Vinicius Junior before getting the ball back to roll into the net. His second was even simpler, Federico Valverde darting excellently beyond Thiago Silva before squaring the ball away from Kepa Arrizbalaga. Inches from goal with time to take a touch, it was a chance even a Chelsea player wouldn't miss. Probably…
As Logan Roy might put it, they're just not killers. They were at least fighters who stayed the course at Stamford Bridge. For the first time in a long time, there was an aggression to Chelsea with and without the ball. The dog days of Tuchel and almost every day of Graham Potter saw the Blues use possession as a primarily defensive force, chances were created but only when the air had been well and truly drilled out of the ball.
There was no such patience to be found in Chelsea's build-up play in this one. Get ball. Move ball to the right wing. Make something happen. The hosts moved with a verticality tailor made to get supporters on their feet, to turn Stamford Bridge into a fortress that might spook even Madrid. For at least a while it worked, Reece James' crosses crashing dangerously into the six-yard area. N'Golo Kante might have done better with hooked volleys in both halves, either side of Marc Cucurella taking one touch too many and firing straight at Thibaut Courtois.
Critics of Lampard, who has now won none and lost 15 of his last 18 matches in football management, might contend that those chances should have been falling to the attackers who, Kai Havertz aside, were nowhere to be found in his starting XI. But then could Chelsea have applied anything like the same pressure on Madrid in the final third if it had been Mykahilo Mudryk and Joao Felix in the front three, rather than Kante and Conor Gallagher? A team bereft of creativity and mutual understanding is going to rely on winning the ball back high up the pitch if it is ever going to break its barren streak in front of goal.
Another transfer window, a change of coaches and who knows what other external factors might bring with it a playing staff that demands an entirely different approach but for the remainder of the season at least, Lampard might as well try out this approach and stick to it. The challenge will be doing so while giving the club hierarchy a chance to understand what they actually have in their chaotically assembled squad.
Mudryk showed once more that he has pace to burn but a first touch to inspire a cozy feeling in opposition defenders; he needs game time if Chelsea are to work out whether there is more to him than a flop in the making. The same is true of Noni Madueke and frankly even Raheem Sterling. With Christopher Nkunku waiting in the wings, is it worth paying nine figures for Joao Felix solely to take the number of second strikers and inside left attackers to parodic levels?
Then there are the questions over Gallagher and Mason Mount. If Tuesday's performance is in any way representative of how Chelsea aspire to play then the former might merit being more than a transfer makeweight for the summer. The latter seems bound for the exit door but is another who would be ideal for a press-heavy system. It should be a point of pride and principle for Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali -- who strode to the home dressing room at around 10:30 p.m. UK time, undeterred by the furor of recent days -- that Chelsea find a way to recover the Mount of the Tuchel era, a homegrown superstar who can excel in any system imaginable.
Get a manager lined up quickly and many of these questions answer themselves. If there is an advantage to having such a bloated squad it is that you can trim it into the style you want. Is Chelsea 23-24 going to be built to exploit the skills of James, so exceptional against Madrid, and Ben Chilwell out wide? Then the squad will need midfielders and wide forwards who crash the box. The hierarchy could just as easily conclude that they want a more cautious, possession-heavy approach based around the qualities of Enzo Fernandez and Mateo Kovacic in midfield. The ingredients are there for that.
Options and time are two things most clubs can never get enough of. Chelsea have an awful lot of both right now. That and that alone puts them in an envious position.
