Perhaps what was most striking in Chelsea’s 4-4 draw with Manchester City on Sunday was how one team played entirely to type, and one team didn’t. That’s a situation that should give hope not only to Chelsea but to the rest of the league: perhaps this iteration of City is not quite so relentless and remorseless as had been thought. They go into the international break only a point clear of Arsenal and Liverpool, whom they face in the first game back.
Chelsea are unpredictable, occasionally brilliant, skittish and chaotic, and have in Cole Palmer a player who seems as yet not to have been ground down by the game, who regards structures and expectations and pressure with an anarchic insolence. A vital injury‑time penalty against the club he left in August for a player who says he doesn’t really practise penalties? No problem, the ball dispatched calmly into the top corner.
His behaviour when City were then given a dangerous free-kick – awarded for a crude lunge by Raheem Sterling, a player who, it’s fair to say, did not deal with a game against his former club with quite such sangfroid – also seemed telling.
As City players clustered over the ball discussing plans, Palmer stuck his head into the huddle, presumably hoping they would forget he was no longer one of them. And it might have worked, had Erling Haaland not been late to the gathering and noticed the darker blue of his shirt.
The Norwegian’s expression as he dragged Palmer away was hard to read, but given the apparently warm chat the pair had had as they waited for kick-off after the penalty, it was probably closer to a grin than a snarl.
Either way, the point is that Palmer was unfazed enough in the maelstrom to pull off an act of mischief that was less espionage than a joke of a gently mocking kind that underlined the fact that it was he, the former City reserve, who had denied them the win.
But City are not supposed to be unpredictable. Their excellence is meant to come as standard. The virtue their manager, Pep Guardiola, most prizes is control. And the one thing they lacked on Sunday was control. One attack ended, a counterattack began immediately. It was exhausting, breathless, thrilling, very unCitylike. Some xG models had Chelsea slightly ahead, but an eye test told you how close City came to losing that game: the penalty they were awarded was dubious, given Haaland seemed to have grabbed Marc Cucurella’s shirt before the Spaniard grabbed his, and Rodri’s goal flew in with the aid of a huge deflection – albeit Thiago Silva must bear some responsibility for the lack of conviction as he wagged his leg towards the ball.
By Opta’s figures, City conceded an xG of 2.9, more than double any previous game this season. Only in the 5-2 defeat against Leicester in September 2020 have they conceded as much in a league game under Guardiola. The disarray was summed up by Rúben Dias, who made an extraordinary lunge as Conor Gallagher shot in the buildup to Chelsea’s third, getting nowhere near the strike while taking himself out of the game as the ball bounced back off Ederson for Nicolas Jackson to knock in the rebound. He then made a very similar lunge at Armando Broja to concede the late penalty. Guardiola defenders are not supposed to be sliding around on their backsides.
So what went wrong? Why did City suddenly find themselves facing attacking midfielders charging at them? Part of the problem had been anticipated by Guardiola when he spoke of the problem caused by John Stones’s thigh injury. With Julián Álvarez included as a sort of second striker, there is a need to find another midfielder from somewhere. Stones, stepping up from the back four, whether full-back or centre-back, provides that. Manuel Akanji, in his first attempt at the role, did not offer the same authority.
At the same time, the downside of Jérémy Doku was apparent. The 21-year-old has been exceptional since joining City in the summer, scoring three goals and setting up six, and generally thrilling fans with his dribbling. But dribbling is an attribute Guardiola distrusts; it is essential, but must be used sparingly. He effectively reprogrammed Jack Grealish, but Doku has not yet gone through that process which means that, more than other City players, he gives the ball away at times when they are not prepared to be countered against. Grealish may regain his place against higher-quality sides for the rest of the season.
But all of this, of course, comes with a caveat, which is that City still scored four and that they remain top of the league. If they drop their first home points of the season against Liverpool in a fortnight, perhaps it is time to worry. Otherwise they can probably regard Sunday’s draw as a minor blip that their manager can use to reassert his principles. On the other side, there may be evidence that Mauricio Pochettino is beginning to fashion a team from all of Chelsea’s disparate parts.
This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition
