Chelsea 0 Brentford 2: Home fans storm out with 13 minutes left and call for Pochettino as Lampard loses fifth in a row
NO WONDER Mauricio Pochettino is holding out on taking Todd Boehly’s dirty dollars.
The harder Chelsea fall this season, the easiest it will be to pick them up from June. A burnt out wreck of a club abandoned in a lay-by.
Talks are way down the line between the former Tottenham boss and American chairman Boehly.
But you can see why he is not exactly champing at the bit to stroll in and pick up the broken pieces of a team from beleaguered caretaker boss Frank Lampard.
Chelsea are in freefall. This, a fifth defeat on the spin and they do not look like pulling out of the tailspin any time soon. They were booed off at half time and full time.
Pochettino could well come in and finish tenth next season and it will look a job well done.
If Lampard loses again next Tuesday at Arsenal, highly likely that is too with the Gunners fighting for their lives in the title race, it will be a clean half dozen losses in a row.
A desperate run not witnessed here since Glenn Hoddle was manager in 1993.
It’s a miserable but honest reflection of a club into its fourth manager of the season. Rudderless and hopeless.
A goal in each half clinched a second successive win at Stamford Bridge for Brentford who took every opportunity to rub Chelsea’s noses in it too.
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Each took a deflection off a Chelsea player – Cesar Azpilicueta for the first and Thiago Silva the second. But teams make their own luck.
After a spirited resurgence when Lampard ripped up his early tactics with a double substitution and change of formation, they were undone by a classic sucker punch.
With 12 minutes left sub Bryan Mbeumo broke free just inside the Chelsea half, raced into the box, then cut inside to drill home a shot off the outstretched leg of Silva to seal victory.
It doesn;t take a genius to see what’s wrong with Chelsea yet the combined brain power of several former England legends in the dugout and a room full of billionaires cannot find the answer.
Lampard zeroed in on last week’s gallant defeat against Real Madrid by using his programme notes to point towards the zip his otherwise flatlining players managed to summon up from the off against the Spanish giants.
Chelsea’s squad are clearly not reading the script. The gung-ho feeling from the get-go was missing last night despite warnings from Lampard that there is no hiding place at Chelsea, even within the confines of mid-table obscurity.
The first effort on target from either side did not arrive until the 23rd minute and even then it was a tepid header straight at keeper David Raya from Chelsea defender Thiago Silva at the end of a set-piece.
It was hardly free flowing and certainly not the kind of response Lampard expected after having a full week on the training ground to try to inject some kind of life into a bunch of players with visibly draining morale.
Brentford’s goal was appropriately scruffy and unkempt in keeping with the tempo of the match.
A corner fired into the box by Mathias Jensen was headed on by Danish defender Zanka.
As it was slipping harmlessly wide of goal it struck the arm of Blues captain Cesar Azpilicueta and bobbled over the line with the rest of the Chelsea defence wrong-footed.
Stalwart Azpilicueta was back in the side for the first time since February 18 and what an impact.
There was little he could do to avoid it but the ungainly, embarrassing nature of his own goal – the fourth of his 11 years at the club – just sums up Chelsea’s deteriorating and humiliating season.
There is a clear feeling that Chelsea’s players just want this bizarre season over and done with, so they can high-tail it into summer even though there are still half a dozen games to go.
Azpilicueta was the fall-guy at half time being hauled off for Michailo Mudryk while Conor Gallagher made way for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as Lampard broke with tradition and decided to play a striker up front and went for more pace up top.
The response wasn’t quite immediate but it was noticeable. Sterling out on the right flank, Aubameyang comfortable through the middle, Mudryk tricky on the left.
Which is why there were at least three good chances within the first ten minutes of the second half. N’Golo Kante shooting just wide, Aubameyang recovering from a trip to fire straight at Raya and then heading just over the bar.
He almost scored again in the 58th minute when Mateo Kovacic sliced Brentford down the middle with a pinpoint pass that allowed Aubameyang to run on and blast another effort at Brentford’s busy keeper.
Were he not so rusty, who knows how many would have got through?
But just as they looked like getting level on a rush of blood, Mbeumo nailed it with the killer strike.
Chelsea will not go down but there is a possibility they could finish the season as London’s bottom team.