Tuesday night’s Champions League clash saw Chelsea slump to a 3-0 defeat at the hands of German champions Bayern Munich thanks to a double from Serge Gnabry followed by a goal from Lewandowski to complete the scoring. From a Chelsea perspective the result was disappointing, but not surprising. The very fact that Chelsea progressed through the group stage of the competition in itself is quite surprising and have exceeded expectations. Going into this season many expected a mid-table finish or worse as the team was simply not good enough and full of players who had never played at this level and a manager who has never managed at this level. The transfer ban did not help proceedings in the slightest and just added to a list of difficulties this season would bring. As a Chelsea fan myself had I been asked would you take being in the last 16 of the Champions League and 4th in the league at the end of February I would have bitten your hand off. The truth is there has been a distinct gulf between Chelsea and the “elite” level teams such as City, Barca, Madrid, Liverpool and obviously Bayern in the past 6 or so years. This is quite simply down to the fact that Chelsea are currently in a transition period. They recently saw almost all of their most famous and most successful players leave or retire all at once. Lampard has actually been very positive and very progressive in terms of where Chelsea need to go next. He has handed several youth players a place in the squad whom previously would have been loaned into oblivion and actually turned them into players who don’t look out of place in the Premier League. For the first time in quite a while it looks like Chelsea have a plan instead of mindlessly floating through league campaigns throwing money at average players, they seem to be taking a more calculated cautious approach. I, quite confusingly was not annoyed or upset at the result on Tuesday because I got everything I expected. The only thing that I took from the match is that the only way from now is up. This loss will show the board and the management how far off being competitive we truly are and as a result spend money and get a better team. What Chelsea need to focus on is finishing the season strong with a Champions League spot and attempt to rebuild in the summer and come back better than they are this season.
Agree with the part that Chelsea are nowhere near the level of Bayern's. Our team is still in transition period and we needed to sign some quality players to have a chance against Bayern.
Every single Chelsea fan knew Bayern were going through when we got them!— Aniket (@QuieterMe) February 25, 2020
