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Faced with literally no choice but to make a quick judgment about Thomas Tuchel’s tenure at Chelsea after a game and training session: in the DARK for crying out loud – we can only conclude from a drab and wet goalless draw against Wolves which will be an abject failure.
Sure, coaches need time to impose their ideas and plans on a team and that’s hard to do in the middle of any season, no matter what. But when you shoot bambiYou don’t have the luxury of time and this was not good.
After a brilliant, almost fierce start, in which Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ben Chilwell had some joy early on in side roles outside the narrow forwards three with Hakim Ziyech and Kai Havertz trailing Olivier Giroud, but when the fierce Initial pace inevitably slowed down soon the pattern was established. Chelsea generally had the ball and the Wolves were happy to put them down. This continued until the final 15 minutes, when introductions by the first Christian Pulisic and, later and most notably, Mason Mount gave Chelsea renewed, if ultimately futile, impetus.
Mount, inevitably, will be the story of the night. The decision to leave it out of a starting XI that relied heavily on experience meant that Tuchel’s first game would always be judged, for better or for worse, relative to the absence of Lampard’s talisman.
That Mount came in and made a noticeable difference in the game with no time to make the same difference on the scoreboard only exacerbates that effect.
There are so many caveats that should apply to a first game in charge the day after being designated, but Chelsea fans have the right to raise an eyebrow a bit concerned about how much this game resembled Sarriball’s worst.
There were positives there if you squinted enough. Hudson-Odoi was excellent on both flanks at various points, while Ziyech was decent enough.
But this was another Chelsea performance that raised more questions than it answers. Kai Havertz remains a huge disappointment. Getting the tone out of his compatriot will be one of Tuchel’s most important tasks. They need to carry some attack threat from somewhere. This was really too easy for the Wolves and it’s a plan that many other teams will be happy to follow over the next several months. Three goals in six Premier League games is something that needs to be addressed urgently.
A first half that featured 466 passes from Chelsea and no clear chance is a simplistic but accurate summary of how the game unfolded. The second opened a bit more as things progressed and the rain fell, however, it was a rare break from the Wolves and a shot from Pedro Neto went over Edouard Mendy and on top of the crossbar that was actually more close to breaking the deadlock.
This looked like what it was: a game between two mid-table teams a little short of confidence and markedly short of ideas. The Wolves’ simple plan, to sit behind the ball and stay on it for as long as we can, clearly worked better than Chelsea’s attempts to simply pass the visitors to their deaths.
You assume Chelsea will improve once Tuchel can get to work on the team, but it really is necessary. Bambi didn’t die from this.
Dave tickner
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