Chelsea: Three lessons learnt in snoozefest at Barnsley

2. Tammy Abraham to the rescue

There were a lot of negative takeaways from this game, but the team won, right? There needs to be one positive—at the very least—and there was at least one. The most important and major takeaway was the brilliance of Tammy Abraham, who not only scored a goal, but saved Chelsea from conceding an equalizer late in the game. It was heroic, and I can’t stress the importance of that goal-line clearance enough.

Overall, Abraham was Chelsea’s best player against Barnsley. He tried his best to link-up well with the midfielders, and he made great runs that sometimes went unnoticed. Abraham had that one great dribble in the first half, and had a great idea to lob it to the nearest teammate, but his execution was what let him down.

Here’s something that always goes unnoticed whenever we talk about Abraham though: he works really hard. The English No. 9 did the same thing in this game. He was fighting for every duel and every loose ball, which is more than we can say for other Blues. To top it all of, obviously, he scored the goal on one end and saved one on the other. It was all just very crucial, as Tuchel said. Of course, he wasn’t the only positive in the match. Tuchel made some fantastic substitutions at halftime, like bringing on Reece James, who was one of the only other candidates for the Man of the Match award. He gave Abraham the perfect pass after a great overlapping run in the right flank to lead to the winner.

Now, I wouldn’t call this his best game by any means—it wasn’t—but you can see how big of an impact he can have. This rings true even at times when he’s having a bad game, as well. Abraham can influence the outcome of the game whenever he wants to, and that’s something Chelsea fans have always liked about the forward. That was on full display again at Barnsley.