Man City 1-0 Chelsea: 3 Blues positives and negatives

Manchester City defeated Chelsea 1-0 on Sunday at the Etihad Stadium to mark their Premier League ‘3-peat’ win. A second-string City team collected all three points against the Blues thanks to a goal from Julian Alvarez in the first half. As a result, the Blues‘ two-game winning streak came to an end and they suffered their sixth straight loss to MCFC.

It was completely expected from Pep Guardiola’s point of view to heavily rotate his squad as his dynasty clinched another Premiership medal due to Arsenal’s fall to Nottingham Forest on Saturday. The rotated Citizens’ were still strong enough to dismantle this underwhelming west London club as the Chels’ ultras are dying for the final whistle of the season to be blown. Lets look at some little positives from the game and more negativizes shall we?

Chelsea Positives:

One game down, two to go

With the match against the league leaders out of the way, Chelsea sits on 36 matches played in this season and only have two matches to play. The Blues will have to make themselves comfortable in Manchester because their next game is a trip to Old Trafford. Sticking with playing games up north, the west Londoners face off high flying Newcastle United to conclude their 2022-23 league season.

Chelsea didn’t get embarrassed!

After seeing how badly ‘Citeh’ demolished the UCL and CWC holders, Real Madrid, many expected Chelsea were next on Guardiola’s hit list. However, despite losing in a boring contest, the Blues were lucky that the sky Blues were on second gear throughout the evening. In fact, Chelsea have beaten Man City on xG – too bad that doesn’t give you any points huh?

No goals for Erling Haaland against the Blues this season

Who would’ve guessed record breaker Erling Haaland would score a grand total of ZERO goals against Chelsea in all competitions. Granted he didn’t play a single minute in any of the cup fixtures City had against Chelsea, but he did play in both of the league fixtures. No goals for him despite the season he’s having deserves a little pat on the back.

The Negatives

Clinched bottom half finish

Embarrassing – despite spending well over half a billion on transfers and this is the best Chelsea can come up. The blame goes all round which includes the board, management, and of course the players. Chels’ will finish in the bottom half of the Premier League table for the first time since 1996.

Champions vs Holograms

Even against City’s B-team, you can clearly see a huge gap in quality. Whether it’s from morale, skill attributes, or management, the three time winners in a row are vastly superior than their English counterparts. It should come to no surprise that the west London club has seemingly given up just like us fans. However, the players can’t just go AWOL, so all we see now are their holograms moving around the pitch doing whatever they feel like.

Massive clear-out is needed if Chelsea want to improve under Poch

After a massive spending spree between the previous two windows, it comes to no surprise that Chelsea are under the pressure of FFP. Without European qualification, it becomes even more evident that a clear-out is necessary to one, clear the books and two, to minimize the squad size. Report came out that Pochettino would like his squad size to be cut to just 25 senior players. As of right now, the current Blues’ dressing room is so crowed that some individuals are forced to sit on the floor and change elsewhere.

The upcoming pre-season under Poch would give us a great insight on how the upcoming season will unfold for the west Londoners. However, the news of the Argentine’s appointment hasn’t been revealed to the public just yet, but it’s only the matter of days now.