Chelsea 0-4 Man City: Pressure? The Blues don’t know the meaning of the word – The Warm-Up

MONDAY’S BIG STORIES

The Great Potter Throwdown

It’s not very English Football to admit it, and it’s certainly not very ‘Magic of the Cup’, but there’s a sense in which losing to City is absolutely meaningless. Everybody loses to City more often than not, for they are the most coherent and consistent of the superclubs, a finely-tuned squad and a coach and a backroom and an upstairs all singing along in perfect harmony. Chelsea are none of those things, and they also have an injury crisis. What were they supposed to do, win?

But there’s not winning and there’s not winning, and Chelsea have just delivered a two-part masterclass in how to tell the difference. Down at Stamford Bridge they were in the game, perhaps even shading it on certain intangibles, only for City’s fundamental Cityness – that is, having millions of pounds of game-changing talent on the bench – to eventually make the difference.

But up at the Etihad a few days later, and even with the adjustments for a cup tie, Chelsea barely appeared to be there at all. They managed the grand total of zero shots in the first half, on-target or off-, and they didn’t get a huge amount of relevant defending done either. Things improved a little in the second half – a shot! only conceding once! – but this was still, all things considered, a proper going over.

The Warm-Up has often suspected that a lot of managerial pressure happens because there isn’t really much else for most of us to do. The position of manager is the most exposed part of any football club: the players have strength in numbers and expensive contracts, while the board have the protection of the posh seats and, of course, all the actual power. In theory the only actual pressure on a manager should be coming from above, but in practice the dressing room can certainly cost a coach their job, and arguably the fans or the press as well. When the only functional button we have is marked “Increase pressure on coach”, everything starts to look like a coach under pressure.

But that’s the operative term: “looks like”. Graham Potter seems to be a man in trouble because in four months he’s taken Chelsea from ‘maybe a bit rubbish’ to ‘definitely a bit rubbisher’ and that, in combination with his lack of ‘Big Club’ success and the strangeness of his appointment in the first place, simply has to add up to ‘man in trouble’. That’s how football works. That’s what this big red button does. Press, press, press.

Obviously sacking him after four months and no transfer windows would be precipitous, and perhaps even daft. But sacking Tuchel was precipitous, perhaps even daft, and here we are. The common thread that unites the two decisions, and what ultimately persuades the Warm-Up that Potter will be keeping his job for a good chunk of time, is the lack of attention paid to the received wisdom. Everybody thought Tuchel was a winner who deserved more time: nah. Potter getting booed off by the away end: also nah. This is a project. Look under the table. They have disconnected the button.

And assuming Potter is safe, then he’s in a rather fortunate position. The more we see of the long-term project, the more necessary the long-term project seems to be. It appeared, when Tuchel was sent on his way, that all the Chelsea dressing room needed was an arm round the shoulder (and a striker, obviously). A quick, expensive coat of paint. But now it turns out all the ceiling joists are rotten and there’s mould coming up the walls and that wiring isn’t sound and what’s that strange smell? Tear it all down, start again.

The Doom That Came To Villa

For hundreds of years there was a tradition in European art of painting a skull and perhaps a few bones into an otherwise un-morbid work of art. This was the memento mori, the reminder that one day you will have to die. Keeps you grounded. Keeps you humble.

As ever, it’s tempting to make this the story of the giant’s inadequacies: how Villa were lacking in sharpness throughout and then focus at the end. And to call the defending for Stevenage’s winner miserable would be an insult to misery: nobody seems to notice Dean Campbell going short, then Ollie Watkins charges out to block but seems to lose the posts behind him, and then Robin Olsen dives like a statue of Robin Olsen being pushed over by a gang of toddlers.

But enough about the giant. Jack did an excellent job, even before the giant’s brains began to fade. Tight, compact, and unpleasantly well-organised, Stevenage asked Villa to either pick their way through a congested middle or take their chances with crosses. And for the most part they cut everything off. Morgan Sanson’s goal was a thing of unusual precision because it had to be. Nothing else was getting through. And the jokes about Philippe Coutinho began even before the result had flipped.

Once the most important competition in the footballing world, the FA Cup has suffered myriad indignities in its long life, from that time Manchester United didn’t even bother to the current trend of rotation and disrespect. But somehow it survives. The giant falls, and Jack dances, and the great and the good are once again forced into contemplation of their own mortality. . Who needs a skull in the corner when you’ve got Steve Evans coming in for a handshake?

International Shenanigans

You couldn’t call it a rule, but it’s definitely a tendency. When a manager leaves, the replacement must be in one sense or another the complete opposite. And we can think of no finer illustration than Portugal’s imminent move to replace Fernando Santos with Roberto Martinez.

Farewell, defensive tightness. Hello, fun times! Maybe for Portugal and maybe for their opponents, but definitely for the neutral. Once, asked why a side of his was quite so defensive, Santos replied “Should we keep fooling ourselves, mistaking sardines for lobsters?” We’re pretty confident that Martinez sees nothing but lobsters everywhere he goes: lobsters dancing, lobsters singing, lobsters careering around and waving their pincers in the air.

For a while it seemed as if France were going to go the same way, and replace Didier Deschamps with Zinedine Zidane. But apparently that was all nonsense. We’re going to keep on getting the same old France, and we’re going to lump it, and we’re going to like it. But Deschamps’ new deal ends in four years, and that’s about enough time for Martinez to have done something with Portugal, and… oh, it couldn’t happen, could it?

IN OTHER NEWS

Stretching the definition of news well beyond breaking point here, but this has always been one of our favourite lines of commentary, and Wrexham winning at the weekend gives us the perfect excuse. “The magic little man…”

RETRO CORNER

That was where Vialli came from, when he arrived in England. From the place where the grass was a greener shade of green and the football a clearer shade of brilliant.

HAT TIP

“He gave me my first game at Derby in April of that year and the following weekend, he played me at Stamford Bridge for the first time in a 2-0 win over Tottenham. Luca was in the team that day and I remember how he talked me through the game. You had Dennis Wise screaming at you in one ear and in the other you had Luca, who would just coach you, focus on you. He wanted to develop and help everyone he could. He was more than just a manager.”

“He was a huge star when he came to Chelsea, but he embraced the club and never gave it the big ‘I am’. He got on with it, and got the respect of everyone around him. […] He was always learning about the English way of life; if he heard a little phrase in English that someone said, he’d sit there and write it down because he wanted to integrate as much as possible.”

COMING UP

What indignities will Mikel Arteta commit on the touchline this evening? Ben Snowball will be here tomorrow with all the details.