Wolves rightfully crushed Mauricio Pochettino’s side 4-2 as it was another terrible afternoon for the Blues at Stamford Bridge.
For the second match in five days, the hosts conceded four goals, and at the end of each half, they were jeered off by the crowd as they screamed the name of the former owner, Roman Abramovich. However, this performance was much worse than their crushing loss to Liverpool on Wednesday.
Chelsea took a brief lead thanks to Cole Palmer’s deft finish off of Moises Caicedo’s well-placed pass, but as soon as Matheus Cunha equalised with a heavily deflected shot, everything came apart.
The goal and the more expensive Axel Disasi touch gave Wolves the advantage, but the visitors created their own luck by being compact and patient while their opponents became more agitated.
After the interval, Chelsea showed a worrying lack of improvement and instead found themselves two goals behind after Pedro Neto’s brilliant play, which saw him speed past Thiago Silva and square for Cunha to add a third.
After Raheem Sterling was substituted midway through the second half, Wolves’ situation worsened. Malo Gusto’s reckless challenge on Cunha resulted in a stonewall penalty, which the Brazilian calmly converted to complete his hat-trick and spark more jeers from the home crowd.
Silva’s header from a corner four minutes from time gave Chelsea supporters still present at Stamford Bridge some cause for celebration, but there wasn’t much to divert attention from yet another depressing performance and the team’s first home loss to Wolves since 1979.
Pochettino said after the game:
“I think we are all not good enough, that’s the reality. Myself also, as the first person responsible. Of course, what we showed today was that we are not good enough. I agree, 100 per cent.
“We didn’t manage the situation properly, and I don’t want to come here and say I am the best and the players are the worst – but the players have to take responsibility as I do.
“We are not matching the history of the club. We need to accept it and be critical, but we cannot give up. We have to keep working, try hard to change, take decisions to try to find things in a different way if it’s not working in this way and find different solutions.”
Meanwhile, counterpart Gary O’Neil said:
“The lads deserve an awful lot of credit to be able to put in that kind of performance physically, to be able to emotionally recover from that setback on Thursday.
“To fight back to 3-3 against Man Utd and then concede a fourth, then go down 1-0 here, it would’ve been very easy to accept a Chelsea win everyone was expecting, but everyone managed to dig in and fight back, and stick together.
“I’m unbelievably proud of the players and the staff. In the summer we signed three players, and lost a lot of players. In January we weren’t able to strengthen, so everyone at the football club understands we need to maximise everything.”
Chelsea travel to Villa Park next for their FA Cup fourth round replay before making the short trip to south London to face Crystal Palace on Monday, while Wolves host Brentford on Saturday.
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