Carabao Cup: Why Chelsea kick off vs Leeds was delayed by 15 minutes | OneFootball

Blues looking to reach fourth round of domestic cup

The Blues were set to face their Premier League opponents at Stamford Bridge, but disruption on the London train network has meant that the start of the fixture was pushed back by a quarter of an hour, with the fixture now set to commence at 8.15pm BST.

As a result, it directly impacted supporters’ ability to get to the stadium for the match.

A number of Transport for London tube lines were down on Wednesday night due to reasons including signal failures and an “earlier customer incident”.

It emerged that there was an emergency passenger incident at South Kensington tube station on the District Line, which has now been closed, and the safety officer, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police, decided that kick off would be delayed in west London.

A statement on Chelsea’s social channels and displayed on the big screen at Stamford Bridge informed of the changed kick-off time.

At 7:40pm, Chelsea’s official channel posted on X: “There will be a 15 minute delay to kick-off for our Carabao Cup third round tie with Leeds United tonight.

“The match will now begin at 20:15 BST.”

The third-round tie was not a sell-out and tickets are still for sale, while fans were seen slowly making their way into the stadium, having had to reroute their journeys to the match.