What Chelsea's 2-2 Draw With Bournemouth Means for Their Season
By Tom Gott
Flashback to 22 February. Marcos Alonso nets Chelsea's second to fire them to a 2-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur. Champions League qualification is looking good. London is blue.
Just one week later, and all that hard work was undone because Chelsea could not put away a relegation-threatened Bournemouth side.
To borrow a line from CJ from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Ah s**t, here we go again.
Failing to take all three points against a side who are fighting for their top-flight lives (again) is just not good enough from Chelsea. This should have been an easy win which saw them skip away from their rivals and into the Champions League sunset.
But why would they make it easy for themselves? After all, this is Chelsea we're talking about.
Now, both Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur can move terrifyingly close behind. If results go against Chelsea, they could be as low as seventh next weekend, and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
After the game, Frank Lampard told Sky Sports: "With how this season has panned out, we should be pleased that we're in fourth position because people would have questioned if we would get that, but it means nothing at this stage in the season.
"We need to keep fighting and keep working. If we can remain in and around it and manage to get into the top four, I think the achievement is huge but we're far from that yet."
It's tough to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong for the Blues this season. Their defensive struggles have been obvious, but perhaps the biggest problem has been at the other end, where Chelsea failed with 21 of their 23 shots against Bournemouth.
The lack of quality in attack is astounding. Although, in fairness, is a front three which contains both Olivier Giroud and Pedro ever supposed to actually be good?
Their biggest goal threat on Saturday came from Alonso - a defender. While left wing-back Alonso may well be the greatest player on the planet (but please, let's not talk about his atrocious left-back twin), it's not enough. The forwards need to step up.
Obviously, injuries haven't been kind to Chelsea. The entire first-choice trio of Tammy Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Christian Pulisic are all out injured, and it's not hard to see the impact that has on the team.
The final ball isn't there. The desire to get into the box is non-existent. Relying on Pedro and Willian isn't going to get you anywhere in 2020.
Now, it's a case of clinging on for their lives. There's no guarantee that Chelsea will come anywhere close to the top four, especially considering they still have to play Manchester City, Liverpool and Sheffield United, so it's time to crank it up a notch.
Points cannot be dropped against the struggling sides. Four of Chelsea's remaining ten games will come against sides who are currently in the bottom five. That's 12 points, and nothing less will be acceptable.