Chelsea’s great big sense of deja vu kicks off the run in

If it feels as if Chelsea has been here before, it is because they have. Losing to West Brom 5-2 while down to 10 men after the half hour mark isn’t as embarrassing as losing 4-0 to Bournemouth or 6-0 to Manchester City, but it is cut from the same cloth.

It’s a little more than that too. Thomas Tuchel has had a fantastic start at Chelsea, only losing once in his first 11 Premier League matches. Coincidentally, Tuchel’s record in the first 11 is the exact same as Frank Lampard’s in the first 11 this season. For all the talk of West Brom being a one off, of not being too critical after Tuchel’s first loss, of the improvement under Tuchel, Chelsea is still in the same place at the same moment.

Don’t take that the wrong way. The last month with Lampard was dire and something had to give. It ended up being Lampard. Tuchel has come in and solidified the Blues and gotten some great victories. Everything feels good right now because it is good. But it’s also the same as it was before. As many will recall, the mood was very good under Lampard this same season until it very much wasn’t.

Chelsea fans shouldn’t expect the West Brom loss to signal a collapse. But at the same time, it very much feels like the same old same old from this squad. Whether it is Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte, Maurizio Sarri, Frank Lampard, or Thomas Tuchel, Chelsea just has this in them.

The argument could be made that Chelsea was down to 10 after an hour and had to push for a goal pretty much as soon as that happened. That’s relevant. It’s also relevant that the opponent was West Brom, a team that has now scored exactly 20% of their total Premier League goals this season in one match against Chelsea. 10 men or not, the Blues utterly collapsed in on themselves when pressured just as they have so many times before.

The entire Lampard fall this very season is the clearest sign of that. Once Chelsea started to struggle, they couldn’t dig out of the hole without a new manager bounce. Tuchel deserves a ton of credit for that, but he’s still working with the same players whose shoulders slumped and heads dropped as soon as things got hard.

With Porto coming up right away, Tuchel will have to find a way to nip that issue in the bud before it becomes the problem it was for Lampard or all those that preceded him. Then the same has to happen against Crystal Palace and Porto again next week, because very suddenly Chelsea’s position in the top four has come under threat.

What should be the biggest concern for Chelsea is that these few weeks back were supposed to be the easy part. West Brom, Porto twice, and Palace before a brief uptick with Manchester City followed by Brighton was supposed to be a clear run. The run after that is brutal. The Blues can’t afford to go into that run on unstable foundations.

Simon Johnson joked on Twitter that Tuchel would say “Now I know how Lampard, Sarri, etc felt” and that really hits the nail on the head with Chelsea the last few years. A loss with 10 men for an hour isn’t unexpected. It being to West Brom is bad. It being a capitulation to the tune of five goals is embarrassing.

Lampard had 19 Premier League games this season to pull the squad out of their own heads. He did, right until they grew overconfident and fell to pieces. Tuchel will also have 19 Premier League games to do the same. His record in 11 so far matches Lampard’s, but he will have his work cut out for him to prevent this squad from doing what they’ve done over and over for years.