For 45 minutes, injured Chelsea players ran around the field, as if wondering what it was all about. To be honest, many of us have been thinking about this issue lately, but given the recent events at Stamford Bridge, the problem has become especially acute. What exactly is Chelsea playing these days? Pride? Escapism? Third place? The work of Thomas Tuchel? Who would even fire him at this point? Is anyone safe these days?
Naturally, Burnley was fine with that. They had their own problems to contend with and after a fairly solid first half, they harbored sincere hope for an unexpected moment in their fight against relegation.
Wut Weghorst and Dwight McNeil could even get ahead of them. Nevertheless, the mood of the teams after the break was upbeat.
What happens next depends on your interpretation of events. Have Chelsea been able to rediscover their sense of energy and purpose, shake off the numbness caused by the Sky Sports news and understand that the joy of good football is its own reward? Has Burnley collapsed and fallen on the altar of its own premature ambitions? Or did the team with the best players just play better football?
All we know for sure is that within two minutes the excellent Reece James gave Chelsea the lead and another six minutes later Kai Havertz put the lead up to two. Two minutes after that, Havertz scored again, and by the time Christian Pulisic made it 4-0 after a comical mistake by James Tarkowski, people had already begun to disperse. Those who remained looked on in a kind of sullen despondency, breaking the silence from time to time, turning to the Burnley players for passing right out of the game, or both pressing the same person, or capturing each other from time to time. friend.
Christian Pulisic scores Chelsea’s fourth and final goal against Burnley. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA.In many ways, it was Burnley that seemed to be in an existential crisis in the second half: a team with form but no real form, with a plan but no real vision, just doing vaguely the same things every week in the hope that it would help. . somehow scrape together 38 points. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but this club has good players, experienced players, players with teeth and hunger. Too little of that was evident this season. Is there more to life than just jumping down the sideline and hoping a few dips will do you good? We can wait a while to find out.
N’Golo Kante was sensational: skating and slaloming the field as if it were his field, sliding and tossing the ball as if it were his ball.
The attacks seemed to speed up as they passed through him. He had a hand in three goals, and only he seemed to understand the importance of the game and the speed of the ball needed to win. Is Kante worried about how the war in Eastern Europe and the threat of sanctions will affect his professional ambitions in the next few years of his career? Maybe.
He is a smart cookie. But what we can say for sure is that he doesn’t play like that.
Kante at full-back was a ball that continued to hurt, with James on the right and Saul Niguez on the left throwing high shots, clinging to Kante’s diagonals and creating chaos. At first, James twisted and turned McNeil before shooting Nick Pope; then Havertz pitched the ball to Pulisic after another good job from James. Then the score was 3-0: again Kante, again James, Havertz fell into the goal, but somehow managed to hook the ball along with him. The fourth was the most unfortunate of all: Tarkowski, with no real pressure, simply passed Saul in the path of Pulisic, who looked almost embarrassed as he buried the ball from four yards.
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The rest of the game was played out to the sound of Chelsea fans singing about their fallen owner, a reclusive billionaire they didn’t know who hadn’t deigned to meet or talk to them in 19 years. The chants began even before the match started: on the train from London, through the streets of Burnley city centre, even as Turf Moor rose to celebrate a moment of solidarity with the people of Ukraine. The ardent applause was quickly interrupted by the choir of Roman Abramovich. This, in turn, was met with boos from Burnley fans. A message appeared on the big screen: “FOOTBALL TOGETHER”.