Chelsea’s fall from power underlined by Liverpool running all over them at Anfield

BY PAUL LAGAN

Just when Chelsea think they have turned a corner, they go and get sideswiped by a massive truck and smashed to smithereens.

Wednesday night’s 4-1 humiliation against a top of the league Liverpool shows just how far the Blue star of west London has fallen. They are 20 points adrift of the leaders – nine league defeats already is a testament to the inconsistency that permeates SW6.

Up next on Sunday is the visit of Wolves, themselves two points and one place adrift of 10th placed Chelsea.

Chelsea have won three league games out of four – and they were all single-goal wins over Crystal Palace, Luton and Fulham – since the 2-1 defeat at Molineux on Christmas Eve.

That’s hardly an endorsement of the project put in place by Todd Boehly and his Clearlake consortium, who bought the club.

Head coach Mauricio Pochetttino, right, could not spin what was clearly a terrible performance at Anfield.

He said: “We didn’t perform in the way we wanted to. They were better than us from the first action, through the 90 minutes. This is the type of game when you say, ‘Well done, Liverpool’. In the [EFL Cup] final, I think we need to approach the game in a different way and I think it will be different.

“It’s so clear they were more aggressive than us. It was difficult to connect and play. It was difficult to recover the ball at the first or the second touch. We lost the ball so easily. They won all the duels.”

The women’s side continues to show the men how it’s done.

Have a clear vision, invest well on proven footballers, develop the younger ones with game time when available and create a feeling of invincibility that leaves the opposition thinking they have lost the game before they even cross the white line, then go out, win matches and titles will follow.

Countless trophies have been won in recent years and the Blues are still on course to retain all they won last year, and are into the quarter-finals of the Champions League too.

Emma Hayes is in the final couple of months as the boss of the Blues, but she leaves behind a behind-the-scenes set-up that needs few adjustments.

Whoever is appointed to take over from her will have to be someone comfortable with the existing arrangements.

Unlike with the men’s side, the powers that be are taking advice from those running the women’s side on a daily basis and not going down the route of wholesale changes. They believe if it ain’t broke, don’t change it.

Assistant coach Denise Reddy will go with Hayes to the US, and replacing the two is deemed the only changes required.

Paul Green and Stuart Searle, long-time servants to the club, will remain.

The two co-directors of the club, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, will make the ultimate decision on who replaces Hayes.

The suggestion that the players were demanding that a female take over are way off the mark, and a club insider said that they were in fact angry at the suggestion.

Hayes has intimated that she thinks a female should be her replacement, but only on the basis that it confirms the ‘least change, soonest mended’ philosophy rather than a bias based solely on gender.

Canada midfielder Jessie Fleming was sold to US outfit Portland Thorns and the £300,000 transfer cash went straight into buying injured Sam Kerr’s replacement – Mayra Ramirez from Levante in Spain.

The Blues face Everton in the WSL on Sunday in the evening game at Kingsmeadow.

PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD