Dumped out: Liam Rosenior
Chelsea Football Newsletter
Chelsea were crushed by Paris Saint-Germain for the second time in a week, downed 3-0 at Stamford Bridge as they crashed out of the Champions League.
An 8-2 aggregate defeat in the round of 16 is a humiliation for the two-time European champions, even if it did come at the hands of Luis Enrique’s scintillating defending champions.
The inquest into just how easy they made this two-legged tie for the Parisians will now begin and must be thorough.
This leaves Chelsea battered and bruised, on a three-game losing streak, and badly out of form.
Liam Rosenior
Chelsea humiliated in Europe
PSG ran riot in Paris, winning 5-2 at the Parc des Princes, and were in no mood to let up as they not only finished the job but totally humiliated Chelsea.
It was a night when every strike, pop-shot or not, that PSG took seemed to land in the top corner; Chelsea found goalkeeper Matvei Safonov an insurmountable obstacle.
Fans inside Stamford Bridge whistled and booed at half-time when Chelsea trailed 2-0 on the night and 7-2 on aggregate, and when substitute Senny Mayulu strolled up to a loose ball and arrowed it past the helpless Robert Sanchez on 61 minutes, the home end began slowly emptying itself as a level of mutiny set in.
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For the first time in their history, Chelsea shipped eight goals over a two-legged tie. There was a sense at full-time of the Blues being put out of their misery, but there was still time for another blow as Trevoh Chalobah was stretchered off around five minutes from time after Liam Rosenior ran out of substitutions.
Defensive errors curse Chelsea again
It has been a week of defensive mix-ups and muck-ups by Chelsea, and that partly explained why they faced a Remontada situation on the night, trailing 5-2 before kick-off and given next-to-no hope of a comeback by neutrals.
The clouds did not clear. It took just six minutes for Chelsea to be undone by a Khvicha Kvaratskhelia goal born of an error by Mamadou Sarr. And it took just eight minutes after that for a breakdown in communication between midfielders Andrey Santos and Moises Caicedo to cede possession and set the rampant visitors on their way to a second goal of the night — Bradley Barcola’s unerring finish — and a seventh in this embarrassingly one-sided tie.
Caicedo and Santos were again off the pace and off the mark when they let a loose ball run for substitute Mayulu to swing the ball into the net for 3-0, and 8-2 on aggregate. Alejandro Garnacho came on and offered some positivity and a level of forward-thinking intent for Chelsea. It mattered not.
Right-back crisis proves costly
A rather dire situation at right-back before the game never resolved itself and, in fact, was ruthlessly exposed by a hungry PSG side. Mamadou Sarr was targeted, and then Josh Acheampong, once the former had been given such a runaround that he was hooked at the interval.
The hamstring injury suffered by Reece James in the Newcastle game, and illness that kept Malo Gusto out, were just another hurdle for Chelsea to overcome. Instead, they succumbed in that area, and badly.
Kvaratskhelia’s diagonal run caused all sorts of problems for Sarr, who was positioned more like a centre-back — which, by trade, he is — than a right-back. And the Georgian was then far too strong for Sarr, who was bumped out the way as he made it 1-0.
Sarr’s replacement at half-time was no surprise, but Acheampong was not much better once he came on. He gave the ball away in a poor area at one stage and was by no means an outlet for Chelsea’s centre-backs or midfielders in the rare moments they sought to play out and forward.