As it turned out, all we needed on the final day was a draw to play Europa League football next season. Brighton lost by three, Brentford drew, and that gave us the inside track for a seventh place finish — not ideal, but better than the alternative.
Instead, we barely showed up. An own goal and a red card in the second half — both coming as a result of panicked, unfocused defending — ensured that we wouldn’t even be able to just get lucky when Cole Palmer’s scoring drought was ended via a helping
hand from the Sunderland goalkeeper.
We all knew what was at stake on the final day. Instead, we had just enough time for one final letdown to bookend the 2025-26 season.
So unserious: that used to be the narrative. We seemed to kick it towards the end of last season. Club World Champions, don’t you know! That’s turned out to be a false dawn. Wesley Fofana’s red card, his second of the season, was our eleventh (11th!) sending off in all competitions and eighth in the Premier League: twice as many as any other team. Only two teams in the history of the league have had more (9 each for Sunderland in 2009-10 and QPR in 2011-12). Maybe we can try to break that record next season. Gotta set attainable goals.
Company man Calum McFarlane had the nerve to claim afterwards that the boys gave it their all. He obviously won’t say anything too controversial to rock the boat and prevent his next interim appointment in about six months, but the idea that Chelsea were giving it our all when Sunderland were running rings around us for the first 30 minutes is patently dumbfounding. (And it’s not like it got much better after.) The atmosphere obviously helped, but there was a team with something to play for and playing like they wanted that something that they were playing for very much. And then there were Chelsea. We could have had ten times the ten minutes of added-on time at the end and we still would’ve never scored.
“I have no qualms or desire to question [the players’] mentality. I know we didn’t win every game, but they gave us everything, every single day. I could ask no more. We just weren’t able to get over the line in the games that mattered.”
Oh, is that all? Just in the games that mattered? Well thank goodness we could at least do it in the games that didn’t matter. Mentality monsters ahoy!
(Alternatively, if that was indeed all we could give, then Xabi Alonso might have an ever tougher task on his hands than we fear. The ink is dry on his contract, right?)
“It’s a disappointing end to the season. We should be finishing a lot higher up the league. For me, with this group of players and talent, we should be in the Champions League. We haven’t. We’ve been too inconsistent at times this year. It’s cost us.”
“We wanted to win today and make the best of a bad situation and get into the Europa League. We weren’t able to do that. We didn’t get the performance we wanted or the result. The message to the fans — we’re as disappointed as them and we’re gutted we couldn’t do it for them. They’ve been brilliant this year, especially in the last couple weeks when we needed to win games. We felt their presence, and unfortunately we’ve let them down today. We weren’t able to put the performance in that they deserved.”
-Calum McFarlane; source: Football.London
It’s okay, Calum. What’s another letdown, after all? I’m almost used to them at this point.
So unlike the last two seasons, 2025-26 ends on a distinct down note. This isn’t BlueCo’s worst season, incidentally, but in some ways, it feels worse than 2022-23. For what it’s worth, they have promised changes going forward; it’s hard to trust that, but Alonso’s appointment should be a step in the right direction.
If there’s ever a time to be hopeful, it’s before the start of a new season. So, here we go.
