Two clear issues laid bare as Chelsea reach Conference League semi-finals but raise new concerns | OneFootball

Chelsea came dangerously close to squandering a three-goal lead

Chelsea have always been on a hiding to nothing in the Conference League and probably will be until they win it. But in inspiring the scenes that greeted the final whistle here, Enzo Maresca and his lifeless team really have managed something quite impressive.

Never before, surely, can a team have been booed off at home after reaching a European semi-final.

Beaten 2-1 on the night by Legia Warsaw, the Blues reached the last-four as utterly unconvincing 4-2 aggregate winners.

Had, as many expected, Maresca sent out a weakened team of fringe and youth players, the drop-off might have been understandable. Three-goal leads can be weird - danger not quite out of sight but hardly knocking at the door either. So can second legs like these, odd games where nothing at all happens are broadly good news.

Searching desperately for momentum that might carry into the vital month ahead in the race for the Champions League, though, Maresca sent out the strongest side of the campaign, spearheaded in blunt fashion by Nicolas Jackson and Cole Palmer.

After all, Chelsea’s players had not spent the days leading up to this affair fretting about Warsaw’s pedigree or penchant for an unlikely turnaround.

For much of an evening at least mildly more interesting than billed, though, the visitors threatened just that, taking a game of forecast formality and bringing the amateur translators into play (‘powrot’ seems to be the closest approximation, since you asked).

An early penalty from the one-time Tottenham man Tomas Pekhart had the Poles back within two goals and a thousand travelling fans suddenly performing a top-half striptease en masse. Had winger Ryoya Morishita not steered inches wide soon after, things might have got very dicey indeed.

Instead, as is becoming his trademark, Marc Cucurella broke the box at the perfect time, meeting Jadon Sancho’s cross to equalise and nip any potential turnaround in the bud.

Even then, Chelsea failed to settle the tie, somehow leaving not one but two players unmarked from a corner, Claude Goncalves from 12 yards out skewing into the heart of the goal for Steve Kapuadi to guide in from six.

Chelsea were never exactly hanging on and to paint the finish here as one of jeopardy would be a stretch. Warsaw had moments in the second half and moved the ball sharply throughout, but never quite carried the belief or threat required to pull off a three-goal heist.

Worryingly, though, belief and threat are two things this Chelsea appear even more devoid of.