Chelsea’s senior players were shown up by Bayern. It’s time for some to move on
https://theathletic.com/1636892/2020/02/26/chelsea-bayern-munich-champions-league/
Frank Lampard spoke of reality checks and learning curves in the aftermath. It was probably the only rhetoric he could summon that threw the focus sufficiently forward, for lingering too long on the run-around his team had just endured at the hands of Bayern Munich, a class apart throughout, would have been too painful. Too damaging. The head coach had to frame this ignominy in the context of what Chelsea still aspire to become. He had to offer hope.
So he acknowledged the Germans’ greater comfort on the ball and, in a numbed monotone, spoke of how clinically they had sliced his team apart after the interval. “We have to accept that fact and be honest with ourselves,” he said. “Those are the levels the Champions League brings at the knockout stage. It’s a learning curve for the club.
“Since 2012, we haven’t enjoyed great success in this competition. We haven’t been reaching the back end of it for some years. This is the reality of what it takes. We have to see the bigger picture. This game showed where we need to get to. There’s a lot of hard work to do. Our players will look at who they were up against and see the levels we want to attain.”
It was the right message to send out to the juniors in the ranks. Mason Mount, his mind frazzled by the time he sliced that shot horribly into the Matthew Harding Stand late on, and Reece James may have departed Stamford Bridge bruised by the brutality of it all, but they have now been set new targets. Learn from this chastening experience and they will benefit in the long-term. So, too, Tammy Abraham, for all that he will have had fitness issues on his mind after limping away from the warm-down on the pitch. Fikayo Tomori, the injured Callum Hudson-Odoi and even Christian Pulisic, in civvies just behind the bench, will also have surveyed the scene as an education.
This generation of spritely talent remains Chelsea’s future. A Champions League drubbing in the last 16 should not detract from the progress they have made, as a group, this season. There is reason still to rejoice in this club’s pledge to youth, and their continued development remains the bigger picture to which Lampard referred.
But what of the elder statesmen in the ranks? The more troubling image painted by Bayern’s rampaging second-half display was of a core of Chelsea players whose better days are behind them, and others whose careers may have plateaued prematurely. Of personnel whose assets may have been blunted by time or, conversely, under-use.
It was of Cesar Azpilicueta slipping in the build-up to Serge Gnabry’s opener, with the Spaniard — for all his heaving effort — unable to recover the space to the winger as he glided unchecked into the box. Or Jorginho pawing anxiously at the scorer’s back while Gnabry was still outside the penalty area, and then watching helplessly as the forward converted Robert Lewandowski’s pull-back with ease.
Perhaps the Italy international was still stewing on the caution he had just accrued for dissent, a booking which will keep him out of the second leg and left Lampard exasperated. That was not the example Jorginho was supposed to set. Certainly, the masterclass in progressive passing put on by Thiago Alcantara left the toils of his opposite number in blue all too clear. Thiago had set upon Jorginho in the game’s early stages, discomforting him and starving him of possession. He never truly recovered his composure.
The home side, with their metronome thrown off-kilter, were made to look increasingly anxious in their own delivery. “At this level, if you give possession away, you’re punished at some stage,” offered Arsene Wenger from a television studio in the Gulf as he picked apart everything he had just witnessed. “They make you run too much and you cannot survive for 90 minutes. In the Champions League, if you lose the midfield, you’re in trouble. That’s rule number one because you play against such good teams. If they can feed their strikers, you will pay for it. We’ve all gone through that.”
Wenger’s Arsenal teams did regularly over the latter years of his tenure, invariably unravelling against the first pedigree opponent they met in the knockout phase. The spankings to which they were subjected by Bayern or Barcelona almost became an annual event, with his players mercilessly made to chase the ball before, once exhausted, their every individual error was ruthlessly punished. Chelsea endured the same treatment here. Bayern may have gone in at the break with the game still goalless and apparently in the balance, but they knew their hosts had been run ragged — the visitors had 65 per cent of the ball in the first half — and would wilt upon the resumption.
How Lampard must have pined for a N’Golo Kante free of niggling injuries to swarm across midfield, disrupting everything Bayern sought to muster. In his absence, Lampard’s team were vulnerable and, once breached, overwhelmed. Azpilicueta, a stalwart of 370 appearances for the club, was beaten in the air by Lewandowski on the halfway line while still digesting their first concession and, marooned so far upfield, utterly unable to recover his position against such slippery opposition.
Olivier Giroud may have excelled against Tottenham Hotspur at the weekend, but Bayern exposed him as ring-rusty: a striker lacking service and, ahead of this tie, limited to 93 minutes of first-team football in his legs since November. Antonio Rudiger is a fine defender, but not a strong-arm leader capable of turning this tide. Pedro and Willian, both out of contract in a few months’ time, are far from the forces they once were. In Kepa Arrizabalaga Chelsea boast the world’s most expensive goalkeeper, but a player whose confidence is shattered to the extent that, at present, he finds himself consigned to the bench.
He is not alone in struggling to fulfil potential. Ross Barkley, while more of a regular of late, still feels more integral to the England set-up than to his club, while Marcos Alonso’s late rush of blood reflected a wing-back fighting to mask the deficiencies in his defensive game. The 29-year-old, like Jorginho, will be suspended for the return on March 18 in Bavaria.
But, realistically, are any of these players able to consider an occasion this humiliating as part of some grander education or progression? Perhaps that might apply to Andreas Christensen, who is still only 23 and whose career has been so stop-start since he broke through under Antonio Conte. But when Lampard urged his squad to “look at who they were up against and see the levels we want to attain”, some might be forgiven to have concluded that such standards will forever be beyond them.
The head coach singled out Mateo Kovacic, alone, for praise with the Croatian’s experience as a three-time winner of this competition with Real Madrid setting him apart. But the collective was made to look what it is: a squad whose forays into the transfer market have been stunted by a UEFA ban and a recent window when they found the required talent was less available, together with the sale of their best player in a generation; and a club who have not won a Champions League knockout tie in six years.
There is still promise. The youngsters retain the faith of the management staff and will continue to progress. The signing of Hakim Ziyech, who will complete his move from Ajax in the summer, is an indication that Chelsea will compete in the market and resist a similar slump to that endured by Arsenal in those barren years of regression. But there will need to be plenty more players of Ziyech’s calibre secured over the summer to lift the overall quality of the group.
The youngsters will learn and, if they are as talented as their displays this season suggest, improve. Others might simply need to move on.
