Chelsea and Rosenior expertly avoid corruption charges vs Man City to deny Arsenal title | OneFootball

For a while it looked as though Chelsea might have crossed the line into completely useless.

Cole Palmer was thoroughly enjoying himself between the lines. Joao Pedro was similarly hard to pin down just ahead of him. Pedro Neto was doing Cruyff-turn nutmegs and barged Rodri to the ground before forcing Gianluigi Donnarumma into a smart save. Malo Gusto was bombing down the wing, mirrored on the opposite flank by Marc Cucurella, who had a goal ruled out for a marginal offside.

They were as confident as Manchester City were turgid in the first half. Jeremy Doku was getting into decent positions but Antoine Semenyo and Rayan Cherki didn’t even manage that. Rodri passed to no one on at least three occasions and lost all four of his duels in the opening period. Erling Haaland didn’t have a shot or a touch in the opposition box.

But the dramatic turning of the tide suggests the joy Chelsea had before the break was either a ploy from the Blues to avoid raising suspicion of their primary aim, or perhaps even an agreement with City that the whole game being as one-sided as it was in the second half would put them both at risk of corruption charges.

Nico O’Reilly’s attacking instincts have been a huge boon for Pep Guardiola’s side this season – as proven in the Carabao Cup final – and while the 21-year-old full-back offering so much if not all of the first-half threat can’t have been seen as a positive, it was his header which broke the deadlock, initiated the City flow and granted Chelsea the opportunity to cede the game without the Court of Arbitration for Sport getting involved.

O’Reilly didn’t really need to jump and brushed Andrey Santos aside very easily but not easily enough to raise eyebrows as Liam Rosenior fielded the smallest possible XI, but still a perfectly valid XI, to gift City aerial dominance to go with their obvious superiority with the ball on the deck. Smart move.

Marc Guehi doubled City’s lead after a stunning eye-of-the-needle pass from Rayan Cherki with a low shot into the bottom corner which looked like a glorious finish from a centre-back at first, second and even third glances but could probably have been prevented if Robert Sanchez had, y’know, tried to save it.

A combination of the Chelsea goalkeeper being absolute turd and the need for several looks to expose the possible foul play makes it an ideal goal to concede for a team chasing defeat. Nothing amiss here, folks.

Chelsea then very nearly went too far. In future attempts to throw games of football we wouldn’t suggest picking Moises Caicedo as the patsy to have his pocket picked in midfield before failing to recover.

That said, Wesley Fofana and Malo Gusto did excellent work in avoiding the wrath of Gary Neville on co-comms while making no attempt to tackle Doku or block his shot, and fair play to Sanchez for making the Chelsea goal as big as possible.

Here’s hoping disbelief at Caicedo dawdling on the ball before being brushed off it can be dismissed though a) City’s excellent pressing and b) Chelsea having no stuffing left in them by that stage in proceedings.  Something to bring up in a debrief we assume will be resoundingly positive beyond that misstep and the unnecessary yellow card Sanchez was shown for time-wasting with defeat already secured.

Pretty good in the first half, but not good enough to score. Absolutely terrible in the second half having presumably been reminded by Rosenior of what was at stake at half-time, but not terrible enough to arouse suspicion over their principal goal of denying Arsenal the Premier League title.