16 Conclusions from Chelsea 0-3 Man City: Guehi, Cherki, and the looming banterpocalypse | OneFootball

Manchester City, as one suspected they might, pounced on Arsenal’s stumble by swatting Chelsea aside in a second-half assault full of menace and threat that echoed wider into the capital from Stamford Bridge.

Pep’s City are in full Pep’s City run-in mode, and Arsenal have now been thoroughly warned.

That Man City fan with his hilarious Arsenal bottle is heading for either fame or infamy.

1. It would be hard to argue this has been the best Premier League season we’ve ever seen. It’s increasingly clear, though, that it may be the funniest.

Five of the old Big Six have spent some chunk of the season in crisis. The other one is Arsenal, who now, along with their idiot North London brother, really might be about to unleash banterpocalypse of the like we have never seen before.

If, as now seems increasingly possible, this season ends with Arsenal potless again and Spurs tumbling into the Championship then we’re going to have to ask that the World Cup be cancelled to make space for all the memes. We’re sure Donald will understand.

But while Spurs’ relegation now requires only their own entirely reliable incompetence, it will still take two to complete the Arsenal bottle job.

And Manchester City, who simply adore this stage of the season, look absolutely ready and able to play their part.

2. That wasn’t so obviously the case in a nondescript first half at Stamford Bridge. City struggled to get their fun players on the ball and Chelsea had decent answers to what few questions City were able to conjure.

Had Marc Cucurella not strayed narrowly and entirely unnecessarily offside before clipping the ball neatly past Gianluigi Donnarumma, Chelsea would have had a first-half lead that didn’t flatter them and might have made everything look very different for everybody.

3. But the second half was pure, uncut late-season Man City. They roared out of the blocks and what happened soon took on the air of inevitability. Nothing he’d ever seen on LinkedIn prepared Liam Rosenior and his ageing men for the onslaught.

Within 12 minutes of the restart a knife-edge, nervy game was decisively City’s. Everyone stopped thinking about what it meant for Chelsea, and barely even carried on thinking about what it meant for City.

As the now infamous bottle-wielding City fan in the crowd demonstrated, this was about Arsenal. This season is going to be about Arsenal no matter what happens from here. Not since Gerrard’s Slip has there been greater potential for all focus on the title race in the popular consciousness to land so entirely on the runner-up.

4. We should probably talk a little bit about these two teams who were actually playing, though. Kind of the job. Does feel like we’ve reached quite an important point for both.

Chelsea have been rubbish for a good while now, and the bare competence of their first-half effort here can’t really disguise the fact that Champions League qualification now looks unlikely in a season where it doesn’t really feel like it would have taken an awful lot to secure it, given the struggles of others.

They’ve lost four of their last five Premier League games and sit forlornly in the bottom three of the form table with Spurs and Burnley, both of whom are actually going down.

5. We’ve long since given up trying to judge Chelsea as a football club, but this can’t be part of the plan.

The ease with which City turned a difficult afternoon into a spring stroll was yet another reminder that Chelsea have spent eye-watering sums of money to end up with a squad of talented but callow youngsters led by a callow manager who, sadly, really is starting to look distinctly fraudulent and not in fact that talented.

It was far from the only evidence of the day, but the sight of Nico O’Reilly bullying the Chelsea defence before soaring above them to head home the opener was bizarre. The lack of planning that has gone into this Chelsea squad never looks more obvious than when you realise just how small a team they can look at the back against the literal and figurative Premier League giants.

6. For City, though, this is just what they do. They have lost just one game beyond the March international break across the last five seasons. And that was on the final day of the 2022/23 season at Brentford ahead of the FA Cup and Champions League finals.

Fair to say City were not at their strongest that afternoon the only player to start that day for City who also started at Stamford Bridge today was… Cole Palmer.

If Arsenal want this title, they will have to go out and win it. City will not hand it to them.

7. What we also have now is a proper clash of styles. Arteta may have once been Guardiola’s apprentice but the two are on divergent paths. As Arsenal’s straitjacket suffocates their football, Guardiola has started to let City run free. Relatively, at least.

Maybe it’s just that Arsenal have become so mechanical. Or indeed that when Guardiola’s own teams have gone wrong in recent years it’s been through being too robotic, but this City team now feels like proper fun to watch when it all starts to click.

To watch Jeremy Doku and Antoine Semenyo doing bits while Rayan Cherki buzzes about between them with unending latent menace is to be reminded of what football can look like.

No team has any obligation to entertain. Effectiveness can be and often is its own reward. But we make no apologies for preferring what City offered up in the second half today to almost everything else we’ve seen in the title race this year.

8. We had few notes after that largely uneventful first half. Mainly just a few questions. 1. Why did Cucurella stray offside when there was absolutely no need? 2. Why is Donnarumma being a bit weird? 3. Why is nobody in world football apparently able to defend against Nico O’Reilly any more?

We still don’t know the answer to number one. We still don’t know why Donnarumma started running back towards his own goal at one point before realising he absolutely had to and easily could come out and sweep up a ball over the top that had Joao Pedro initially only half-interested.

And by the early stages of the second half we’d rephrased the third to: Seriously, why is nobody apparently able to defend against Nico O’Reilly any more, though?

He was City’s liveliest player in the first half and then opened the scoring as the first of two City scorers to tick the Erling Haaland Would Be Proud Of That box. We were going to say ‘unlikely scorers’ but O’Reilly surely no longer qualifies. The run, leap and header for the goal were far more centre-forward than they were central-midfielder-turned-left-back.

9. But it was a catastrophic goal from Chelsea’s perspective. Andrey Santos, who made a mess of a presentable headed chance late in the first half, was all too easily bullied by O’Reilly. And while we’d be loathe to blame a keeper beaten by a firm close-range header, Robert Sanchez didn’t cover himself in glory either.

He was collapsing downwards at the knee and groping desperately up with his arms as the ball entered the net at around head height.

10. City were scenting blood at this point and everything about the second goal apart from the scorer felt entirely predictable. Cherki’s pass in to Marc Guehi, still up in attack from a previous corner, was sublime but the way City’s centre-back controlled on the half-turn before calmly sidefooting the ball into the far corner was exceptional.

He has grown into a senior role at both (massive) club and country with a great lack of fuss this season.

11. Fine as the shot was, it was also the most predictable and obvious route to goal from Guehi’s position. Sanchez’s decision to merely offer a token shuffle to his right while watching and admiring the ball on its way into his net was curious.

Chelsea’s keeper is always something of a puzzle to us, a man who gives off the least convincing and most panicked air of calm we think we’ve ever seen on the field, but this was an idiosyncratic performance.

He couldn’t truly have the blame for any of City’s three goals pinned specifically on him, but he was a significant contributor – or lack of contributor – to all three.

12. The third goal came from Doku rushing Chelsea after Sanchez had rolled the ball out to Moises Caicedo, who was mobbed and robbed by City’s winger, who went on to finish coolly.

The instinct here is to blame the keeper for needlessly putting his midfielder under pressure with a straight roll. But on second inspection, this one was on Caicedo. There was time and space for him to do almost anything. Anything, really, apart from the option he chose which was to dawdle and offer Doku encouragement he scarcely required.

13. Throughout this period, Guehi was having a simply marvellous time of it all. As well as his imperiously taken goal he showed his own creative side with a line-breaking, favour-returning pass to Cherki that could and perhaps should have yielded more than it did.

Soon after it was back to the day job with a vital block to deny Cole Palmer at a time when, with the score still 2-0, a Chelsea goal next might theoretically have made things interesting.

He is yet to taste domestic defeat in City colours and has rapidly established himself as a key, senior figure in this team.

If City are to do something momentous this season – and a second domestic treble for a new-look Guardiola team is absolutely possible now – the January arrivals of Semenyo and Guehi will have been pivotal. At both ends of the table we are seeing the value that can still be found in a January gamble – and the cost of sitting on your hands lest you be seen to panic.

14. Guehi may deserve some of the credit for the rapid development of another key figure in this new City team. Abdukodir Khusanov’s Man City career still feels like it’s harshly and unfairly coloured by his – admittedly desperate – early performances. Those are well over a year ago now, and in recent weeks he’s been exceptional.

And we’re starting to see a range to his game beyond the dominant physicality. His long-range passing is becoming Stones-esque while one fizzing effort on goal had a purring Gary Neville drawing comparisons to Ronald Koeman on commentary.

That might be a bit much, but he looks to be just the latest in a long line of players for whom first impressions are entirely misleading.

15. Immediately thoughts turn to what happens next. Logic and the current direction of travel tells you that Arsenal’s nine-point lead could evaporate entirely in the space of 10 days.

The two contenders’ Etihad meeting has long looked like being a pivotal moment in the season’s story. The only doubt was to what that significance might be. At one point it really did like it could be all but a title confirmation for the Gunners. Now it feels like it could be the beginning of the end.

If City win that, they will go to Burnley in the following midweek holding the chance to take top spot on goal difference. It would be hard to see them relinquishing that lead.

16. But Arsenal must still approach the Etihad with a title party in mind. One performance, one win, and all this talk is ended. They wouldn’t be all-but champions, but they would once again take some serious dislodging and without the inherent threat of the one-game swing.

To do it, though, they will have to beat April Man City. And for everything else that has changed about Man City this year, their near infallibility at this point of the season looks as solid as ever.

The title race is on. The treble chase is on. If Guardiola pulls it off it will be his greatest achievement yet, given everything. And everybody will be too busy pointing and laughing at Arsenal to even notice.