Chelsea missed an excellent opportunity to get back into the thick of the top-six race with last night’s “most painful” 2-2 draw against bottom side Sheffield United at Bramall Lane. In fact, over the past five games, we’ve dropped six points against two teams in the relegation zone (Sheffield, Burnley) and one just above it (Brentford).
Considering that we’re still just five points off Manchester United in sixth, and with a game in-hand, those missed opportunities loom even larger — and even more frustrating as they’re further evidence of issues that have plagued this young team all season.
There will always be finger-pointing at players, coaches, technical staff, and ownership after a poor outcome. Of course, everyone on the team deserves their fair share, but at this stage of the campaign, nobody is hiding the problems with this group: mentality, execution consistency, tactics and management, squad composition and recruitment, expectations, and harsh reality.
And until the offseason, at the latest, none of that can be resolved.
The greatest thing we can do, and maybe the only beneficial thing we can do, with eight league games remaining and perhaps a few more in the FA Cup, is to attempt to keep the players, staff, and management together as much as possible and fans alike
Indeed, it’s a large ask. Still, it’s worth a shot.
Sometimes we lose points because of the way we hold things. There are still games to play, so we must go again and stick together. That’s all I have to say. We still have hope that we will be able to finish where we want to. But sooner rather than later, we must stop doing that [losing points].
This season, cashing in after a big win has been our Achilles heel. We needed to keep on after the prior day’s incredible outcome.
We drew the game in a certain way, but the idea is that we should stick together rather than kill each other. There exist eight games left, that’s 24 points up for grabs and our mentality has to be to get as many of them as possible, if not all of them.”
