We had been hoping for a title challenge, but as we close out 2025 and enter into 2026, the only things in which Chelsea lead the Premier League at the halfway point of the season are points dropped from winning positions (15 at last count) and set piece goals conceded from long throws (4). Not coincidentally, we trail the leaders by 15 points, and are now, at best, hoping for a top-4 finish.
And there seems to be scant hope of improvement anytime soon, with numerous familiar failings continuing to plague
this team and a grand total of zero answers being provided (at any level) to deal with them.
Last night, the shortcomings of the day were largely of the defensive variety, as we conceded more than one goal for the third match running, and for the fifth time in our last eight games. Both goals last night came off long throws; nearly carbon copies of each other. We’ve had all season to figure out how to be better at these, and have made zero headway.
There were failings at the other end as well of course, with numerous quality chances going to waste with the game there for the taking in the second half. We actually finished with less xG than the visitors, but they accumulated almost all of theirs in the first half (with both goals in effect classed as unmissable by that metric). One late chance aside, they did absolutely nothing in the second half, and we did not punish them for it.
Over the last few years, we’ve talked a lot about progress and process. These can be hard to define and even harder to measure, but it sure feels like we’re going nowhere fast at the moment, certainly not in the right direction.
Enzo Maresca won the Premier League’s Manager of the Month award in November. He’s won just one of six games in the league since. Last night, he skipped the post-match press conference, citing illness, even though he was in the dugout as usual for the game and even did a quarter lap around the pitch after the final whistle.
In fairness, none of us were feeling too well after watching those 90 minutes.
Here are some words from Willy C to help soothe none of those ails.
“It was a difficult start [to concede so early] but we have to deal with that. Now, we have to improve that and we go the next couple of games and also the whole second half to improve that. [And] we need to manage and find a way to win those points, kill those games because they are the games that we are going to need to achieve our target.
“Sometimes it’s details, sometimes it’s because the opponent finds a way to break through or to create those chances, but we need to […] find that kind of mentality to not let them find a way to make us lose those kind of games because we invest a lot. Today it was a really good game in terms of playing, how we played, how we went to the other box. We created many chances…”
“[…] All of the other teams invest a lot in long throws and they create many set pieces about that and it just gives us information that we have to deal quickly because we need to improve in any set pieces. We are unlucky to have [conceded] these four goals [from long throws], so we need to correct that and we need to improve because there are many things that happen there.”
“[…] In December and we didn’t do it as we expected so we go now January to start the year for us as a target to improve and to start to find the points that can make us achieve our targets.”
-Willy Caballero; source: Football.London
