Chelsea’s Champions League prospects facing double Milan examination

BY PAUL LAGAN
paul@slpmedia.co.uk

Graham Potter will be scratching his head and wondering why his new Chelsea charges failed to perform sufficiently well on Wednesday night in the Champions League to win against Salzburg.

And the new Blues head coach will also be mulling over his team selection for the next match which is not until October 1, when they travel to Crystal Palace.

Sunday’s home fixture against Liverpool is postponed, policing issues surrounding the Queen’s funeral cited as a contributory factor in the decision. Then it’s a break for the international matches.

Potter, deemed to be something of a footballing visionary in some quarters after guiding Brighton to the higher echelons of the Premier League, will be quickly realising that managing this squad will be different to anything he has experienced before.

The curious decision to keep about £100million of central defensive talent on the substitutes bench, while opting to go with a makeshift centre-back in Cesar Azpilicueta to partner veteran Brazil skipper Thiago Silva, 37, bemused most onlookers.

And when the Austrians equalised Raheem Sterling’s early second-half goal with 15 minutes left on the clock, that decision looked even more baffling.

Sacked coach Thomas Tuchel was given a rendition of his song by the fans on 21 minutes – a reference to 2021 when he won the Champions League for the boys in SW6, and that must have hurt co-owner Todd Boehly, who wielded the sword that cut down the popular German.

Skipper Azpilicueta is the go-to man on such occasions and he was understandably disappointed with the result.

The Spain defender who looked like he was ready to join Barcelona in the summer said: “After losing the first game [against Dinamo Zagreb] we were in a tough position and now it is a bit worse.

“But it is still in our hands and now we work hard, and with a change of manager of course, we try to adapt as quickly as possible to get ideas and to affect them on the pitch.”

Chelsea languish bottom of their group after two matches and have back-to-back fixtures against leaders AC Milan to contend with if they are going to have a chance of getting into the knockout stage.

Azpilicueta said: “We play two games in a row against Milan and we have to be at our best level if we want to get the results and to go into the next stage.”

Of the Salzburg game he said: “ We scored but then we conceded a goal that was disappointing because when you are not effective in both boxes you get punished at this level in the Champions League,

“Raheem is an amazing player when playing wide and creating one-against-one chances and it was an amazing goal.

“We tried to build from the back, get the spaces, get the midfield players into positions and for a moment we had good control of the game, for others not that good, but that is where we are and we have to analyse and be humble.”

“We are quite flexible in terms of system and position of players. That is the way the manager believed that we could hurt them and be stronger as a team and we will work on that.

“Of course we are disappointed with the result but there are a lot of positives to take. We will keep working hard now we have an international break and we then have a run coming with a lot of games every three days, and we have to be ready for it.

“The manager has made very clear what he wants from the players individually and as a team and we have to keep working. We know that we can do better, we have a big room for improvement, we need to keep sticking together and working hard and hopefully the results will arrive.”

Chelsea Women face newly-promoted Liverpool at Prenton Park on Sunday in their opening Super League fixture. The kick-off is at 5pm, brought forward from 6.45pm to accommodate a national silence for Her Majesty.