Chelsea have just reached unprecedented new levels in hideous category | OneFootball

Chelsea’s result against Arsenal yesterday was impressive not just because they got a draw against one of the best teams in Europe, but because they did it with ten men.

Caicedo sees Chelsea’s 6th red card of the season

Moises Caicedo’s tackle on Mikel Merino.

Moises Caicedo became Chelsea’s SIXTH player to be dismissed when he walked for a nasty tackle on Mikel Merino. It’s still the first of December. Robert Sanchez, Malo Gusto, Trevoh Chalobah, Joao Pedro and Liam Delap were the guilty five to already have seen red, plus Enzo Maresca if you want to count that.

This sort of game was always going to be prime for cards, and the hyper aggressive way Enzo Marecsa

The first ten minutes were a flurry of fouls, and it didn’t feel like it would end with 22 men on the pitch. What was slightly surprising was that it was Caicedo who was the one to make the mistake – despite playing in a ball winning position, he usually keeps a pretty cool head. But in this case, he lost it completely.

He’s still learning, and hopefully will realise in the future that the best thing he can do is stay on the pitch. He now has a three game suspension where he can think about it.

Even if we don’t see another red from now until the end of the season we had too many.

In other news…

Reece James was actually disappointed by the draw, and thought his team actually deserved to win despite being down to ten men for 60 minutes. That’s a sign of how ambitions and expectations are changing at Chelsea.

James’ all action performance was too much for Arsenal to handle – he drew 4 fouls from Gunners, and 3 of them brought yellow cards. That has led to some pretty interesting consequences for Mikel Arteta’s team.