There are thousands of details that go into determining the outcome of every game, every season, every career, and yet sometimes everything can turn on a moment. If Chelsea fail to qualify for the Champions League this season, it will have been for a host of reasons, but one incident, not entirely fairly, will stand out: the moment 10 minutes before half-time on Sunday when Nicolas Jackson stumbled, righted himself, looked over his shoulder at Sven Botman and then thrust his right forearm into the Dutchman’s face.
As the wheels of VAR slowly turned, Enzo Maresca, wearing a salmon-pink sweatshirt that gave him the air of a dad on his way to B&Q on a Saturday morning, turned to the bench, spread his arms and swore with a slight shake of his head. How could they be out of the specific bracket he needed? His diatribe at the fourth official felt performative: in his heart he knew he probably should have bought the necessary hardware more than five minutes before starting to put the shelf up, and that Jackson was bang to rights.
Cole Palmer, whose capacity to wander unflappably through life continues to astound, came to the bench for a drink and shrugged, apparently entirely unconcerned, as a sub asked what he thought. Although four Chelsea players surrounded the referee John Brooks as the players left the field at half-time, the biggest scandal of the first 45 minutes was that Moisés Caicedo had escaped a booking.
Yet, while Jackson’s red card was an obviously decisive moment, Chelsea played rather better in the second half when they were down to 10 than they had with 11 in the first. Nick Pope made key saves from Marc Cucurella and Enzo Fernández and there was a distinct anxiety around the stadium before Bruno Guimarães’s deflected second. Which made it all the stranger that Chelsea were so poor before half-time.
They had actually gained five points on Newcastle over the previous three games, without ever giving much sense that they were the form team. Aston Villa’s 1-0 win at Bournemouth on Saturday had added pressure, particularly given their two remaining games are against the Europa League finalists, Manchester United and Tottenham, neither of whom have shown much interest in the league for several weeks. Chelsea, meanwhile, will be without Jackson for their final two games of the season, against United and Nottingham Forest.
The first half felt almost designed to highlight the oddity of this Chelsea team. They dominated the ball, but largely because Newcastle were happy to let them. Maresca favours a patient buildup, long skeins of passing designed to create a solid base and reduce the threat of a counter. It’s an approach that didn’t win favour at Leicester and is far from unanimously popular at Chelsea, which is why Maresca finds himself having to explain his methods so often. To an extent that’s a matter of personal choice; the bigger problem is that it seems such an odd fit for so many of the players.
Pedro Neto, Noni Madueke and Jackson are all better when they have space to run into – as is Mykhailo Mudryk, although he is suspended. But the status of Chelsea and the way they play means that the majority of sides they play against will end up sitting deep against them, meaning that the space so many of their forwards prefer is very rarely there. That could be a problem too with Viktor Gyökeres, should they pursue their interest in him, given the doubt over the Swedish striker is whether he gets his shots away quite quickly enough to be effective in congested situations.
In that sense, once Chelsea had regained their discipline, the red card almost did them a favour: not in the sense that Jackson is a net negative, although there would be plenty of Chelsea fans willing to argue he is, but in the sense that it made them go a little more direct after half-time, forced Newcastle to play with the ball a little more.
Jackson, meanwhile, could end up being one of the casualties of the Chelsea project. He had only ever started 16 league games when he was signed from Villarreal for £30m having just turned 21. To ask him then immediately to become a frontline striker for a Premier League club was deeply unfair. Last season he showed moments of quality but also of understandable rawness and progress this season has perhaps been slower than many would have liked; but then, he is playing in a system that doesn’t especially suit him, under pressure from a crowd that has little faith in him.
Everybody expects Chelsea to bring in a centre-forward next season. Perhaps then Jackson can actually begin to learn his trade from a more experienced practitioner, as he would have benefited from doing over the past two years.
Chelsea’s capacity to attract players, of course, will to an extent be dependent on whether they are in the Champions League or not. They may have beaten the champions Liverpool last week but this was not a performance to inspire confidence. The final‑day meeting with Forest looks increasingly likely to be vital.
