Man City Eases Past Chelsea as Viability of Playing Amid UK's Outbreak Comes Into Question

It ended 3–1 and it could easily have been more. Manchester City, on Sunday at Stamford Bridge, was superb, Chelsea was dreadful and, while this season has been too up and down to be overly confident in any judgment, there is mounting evidence of another title challenge coming from Pep Guardiola’s side. For his counterpart, Frank Lampard, meanwhile, the same old problems continue to undermine his side. 

This game, more than perhaps any other in the Premier League this season, was played in the shadow of COVID-19. Fulham’s game away at Burnley had been called off earlier in the day, becoming the fourth Premier League match to have been postponed because of the virus. The second had been City’s game at Everton on Monday, and the after-effects of that meant Ederson, Ferran Torres, Eric Garcia, Kyle Walker and Gabriel Jesus all missed out. Nathan Ake and Aymeric Laporte, meanwhile, were both injured. 

Benjamin Mendy, who had tested positive for COVID much earlier in the season, was included in the squad, despite having been photographed at an illegal New Year's dinner party. With the UK swept by a new, more virulent strain of the virus, with more than 50,000 new cases being recorded each day, and schools likely to be closed this week, the viability of football has become a major question. 

There have been those like Sam Allardyce who have called for a two-week circuit-breaker (although given the players are not bubbled, it’s not entirely clear how that might work). Players have understandably expressed concern about their safety. The last weekly figures showed only 18 positive tests across the Premier League, but that is likely to rise this week. That sort of number remains manageable, and suggests the protocols are working, but the huge problem seems to be the behavior of players. As well as Mendy, Tottenham’s Erik Lamela, Giovani Lo Celso and Sergio Reguilon, West Ham’s Manuel Lanzini, Fulham’s Aleksandar Mitrovic and Crystal Palace’s Luka Milivojevic have all breached protocols over the past couple of weeks. 

That, clearly, is unsustainable, and there are further concerns with next weekend’s FA Cup fixtures, given testing is nowhere near as frequent at the lower levels. Three Championship games were called off over the weekend, six in League One and five in League Two. 

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For now, though, football continues, and City coped brilliantly with all its absences. This was, by some way, City’s best performance of the season—despite an awful first 10 minutes in which an astonishing number of passes went astray. Suddenly, though, everything clicked, and City looked the slick force it has tended to be under Guardiola. At the same time, Chelsea was utterly dismal, pedestrian going forward and—as so often—lacking defensive coordination against the counter. 

City’s rejigged forward line, with Raheem Sterling on the right, Phil Foden on the left and Kevin De Bruyne as a false nine, was a surprise, but it worked perfectly. Foden was a constant menace, setting up the first and scoring the second, while in midfield Ilkay Gundogan had one of his best games in a City shirt. 

If there was a pleasing familiarity in City’s sharpness and imagination, there was also a familiarity about Chelsea’s failings. It had the better of the first quarter-hour before a simple pass from Joao Cancelo slipped De Bruyne behind the defensive line. He missed—and the evident frustration of his teammates suggested just how City’s struggles in front of goal have started to nag at the squad—but that both showed just how vulnerable Chelsea remains and was the catalyst for City, quite abruptly, to up the level. It went ahead after 18 minutes, Foden helping on Oleksandr Zinchenko’s ball into the middle for Gundogan who turned sharply and fired past Edouard Mendy. The second was a classic break, De Bruyne cleverly nutmegging Cesar Azpilicueta to find Foden, who swept the ball in at the near post. Then Sterling, implausibly, was given the whole Chelsea half to surge into. His eventual effort hit the post, but De Bruyne followed in. After three goals in 16 minutes, the only question was how big the margin of victory would be. 

City’s domination of the second half, a half-paced passing around weary and demotivated opponents, was almost embarrassing. Callum Hudson-Odoi’s injury-time goal meant little. While Man City is up to fifth, five points behind the leader Liverpool with a game in hand entering Monday, Chelsea’s form is a huge concern. It has won just one of its last seven and is seven off the top, having played an extra game–and that’s despite having accounted for roughly a fifth of all the Premier League’s transfer spending last summer. But it’s not just results: The major defensive flaw has not been fixed, and there is little evidence of any kind of attacking plan emerging. Pressure is mounting on Lampard.