Chelsea’s Ross Barkley raises more questions than he answers

A vintage display from Ross Barkley against Barnsley will be forgotten because of his miss, leaving Chelsea fans wondering what version to expect.

Everything looked to be going well for Ross Barkley after such a promising season under Maurizio Sarri, but he has mostly just confused fans as he has struggled to break into Frank Lampard’s side.

The former Everton player has never really lived up to the promise in Chelsea Blue that made most think he was the answer to England’s hole at No. 10. Flashes of brilliance, his range of passing and quick feet were hidden between subdued performances and missed opportunities.

The re-emergence of Barkley under Sarri was then overshadowed by Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s performance and once again Barkley took a backseat in the Chelsea midfield. When Frank Lampard came in to manage the side, he quickly put his trust in Mateo Kovacic which kept Barkley to the last half an hour of games and cup ties.

In the first minutes of Chelsea’s 6-0 rout of Barnsley, after picking up the ball in the middle of the pitch with some quick feet to get away from an opposing player, then a wonderfully sprayed pass to Callum Hudson-Odoi on the wing, every Blues fan watching sat up a little. Was this the real Ross Barkley showing his true colors?

Barkley’s play was consistently good in the first half, and while yes, the opposition was less than the quality he would face in the Premier League, he showed his class nonetheless. His finish in the 49th minute was clinical, his passing good, and he asked questions of the Barnsley midfield and defense when given the opportunity.

Then of course, comes Barkley’s miss; an absolute sitter that he should have scored even when the game was at 5-0. All of that good work for the vast majority of the game and all that will be remembered is his miss.

Perhaps an unfair assessment of the Englishman, but those types of misses are not the ones you can make at that level.

It leaves the question; what kind of Ross Barkley are Chelsea fans going to see? Is he going to be the player that moved the ball well, used his vision excellently and finished clinically or is he always going to be the kind of player that makes the mistake at a critical juncture?

With Jorginho constantly questioned by Chelsea fans, Ruben Loftus-Cheek still not performing to the level he has shown he can, the door is open for Ross Barkley for make a statement. Yet the door will not be open for long as surely when Hakim Ziyech and Christian Pulisic are available for selection, Barkley will slip further down the depth chart.

Barnsley was a perfect opportunity for Barkley to show that he can do a job in midfield, and as Lampard has shown, he likes that three man midfield option so there is room for Barkley to make the place his own alongside N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic.

For the fans that simply want to leave Barkley at home every game, the issue remains that Chelsea desperately need a goal-scoring midfielder and while Hakim Ziyech is expected to help fill that void and add assists into that, his preferred position is on the right of that front attacking three.

Neither Kante, nor Kovacic or Jorginho will fill that hole. Loftus-Cheek perhaps but not based on how he is playing right now. So, once again, somehow, the door is still open, for Barkley.

He certainly still has value, and Chelsea has always been one to capitalize on a good deal. Just take the sale of Oscar as a prime example. When he was sold, Oscar was still a top quality option that delivered on the pitch. He just ran into a manager that didn’t want him.

Barkley does not have the production, or at least the more consistent production, that Oscar provided for the Blues so what is to stop the Chelsea brass from capitalizing while Barkley is still young enough to extract a decent fee?

For all of his early career promise, perhaps this is just the version of Ross Barkley that is here to stay; he will have a stormer of a game against lower opposition, ask questions of middle and bottom table Premier League sides and never cut it against the elite of England and Europe.

Further down the line, if both Billy Gilmour and Conor Gallagher continue on the trajectory that their careers appear to be taking, time looks to be running down for Barkley at Stamford Bridge and the mixed bag of Barnsley needs to be ridded from the Liverpudlian’s game.

All that is certain is that there is no hope in trying to pick or predict what type of performance Barkley will deliver. One minute fantastic, the next making a mistake, clinical finishing and missing sitters, for now there is just enough reason to stay on the Barkley train, but that steam engine might soon start to run out of the coal it desperately needs to keep chugging along.