As the clock ticked into the 93rd minute and James Ward-Prowse lined up a corner kick in front of the Matthew Harding Stand, only two people inside Stamford Bridge did not appear to know what was coming.
One was fellow Burnley substitute Loum Tchaouna, who dutifully ran over to offer Ward-Prowse a short option before a member of Scott Parker’s backroom staff leapt up and bellowed furiously for him to get back into the penalty area.
The other was the Chelsea player — left unnamed by head coach Liam Rosenior in his post-match press conference — who failed to mark Zian Flemming, the biggest aerial threat in the Burnley team. The Dutchman duly sprinted unchallenged to meet Ward-Prowse’s trademark out-swinging delivery and nod a crushing equaliser beyond Robert Sanchez.
Chelsea surrendering the one-goal lead given to them by Joao Pedro’s fourth-minute opener had felt entirely predictable, if not quite inevitable, from the moment Wesley Fofana was shown a second yellow card for catching Ward-Prowse late in the 72nd minute. They have dropped 19 points from winning positions in the Premier League this season, of which 17 have been lost at Stamford Bridge and seven have been lost after going down to 10 men.
It could have been even worse if Jacob Bruun Larsen had not headed narrowly over from an almost identical position at the next Ward-Prowse corner kick, seconds before a final whistle greeted with loud boos around Stamford Bridge.
“That wasn’t on Wesley,” Rosenior insisted afterwards, with the club and the Premier League later condemning racist abuse sent online to Fofana. “That was on our performance. From the first goal, we lacked incision when we had control. I want incision. I want us to create wave after wave of attack. We were too safe in our possession.”
There was plenty of incision in Rosenior’s post-match assessment of his players. “What has happened with me is we have set fire to four points from two home games,” he said. “Anyone watching the game, it’s not good enough for a club of this level… I’m learning about the players. I’m learning about the people you can lean on when things aren’t going your way and you need to see a game out. That’s something we need to address very quickly.”
Chelsea were supposed to be refreshed, mentally and physically, after a rare free week that enabled many of the squad to treat themselves to some well-earned sun, in Dubai and elsewhere. But despite breaching Burnley within four minutes on Saturday, they allowed the same sloppy sense of drift that had encouraged Leeds United on their previous outing at Stamford Bridge to infect this game, as it has on too many other occasions this season.
Fofana’s first booking was more indicative of the malaise than his second. The Frenchman chopped down Hannibal Mejbri, who was also the subject of online racist abuse yesterday, in the 34th minute after the Burnley midfielder had been allowed to dribble through Chelsea’s midfield encountering no resistance. When they were not finding confidence in possession, the visitors were emboldened in their pressing by a preponderance of sideways and backwards passes from Rosenior’s team.
Another red card — Chelsea’s sixth in the Premier League this season, tying a club record with 11 games still to play — will dominate the headlines, but Fofana is the sixth different player to see red and there is no easily discernible pattern to the worst of this team’s indiscipline beyond a general sense of an unfortunate tendency to panic under sudden pressure.
Could it be argued that Rosenior fed into that? Scott Parker said after the match that his late substitutions were a reaction to those of Chelsea’s head coach, who brought off a visibly frustrated Palmer for Tosin Adarabioyo shortly after Fofana’s dismissal. By dropping back with the tallest, most defensively-minded line-up they could field, the home side may have inadvertently helped manifest the set-piece onslaught they were anticipating.
Palmer was taken off at 1-0 (Photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Chelsea’s youth is another characteristic often raised at moments like this one, but it is not regarded as an excuse by those who built this squad and Rosenior is of the same mind. “Youth is one thing, accountability is another,” he insisted. “I’m accountable. I’m the head coach, I’m the manager of the team. I’m accountable for every result and every performance we have.
“We need to have players who you can rely on in the moment to do their job. Set plays are massive in the Premier League, they’re so important. Our record this season, defending set plays, is not to the level which is required for us to achieve what we want to achieve and that’s something I need to address.
“I think there are certain values that you need to have in your team. The best teams, the teams that win titles, which is where we want to get to, they win games 1-0 when they probably haven’t had the best performance. That should have been at least a 1-0. Even with 10 men for 25 minutes, that should have been a 1-0 at the least.
“I know what we need to get there. It’s not down to youth, it’s down to assessing the players and assessing the ones you can rely on in the difficult moments.”
Rosenior is presenting himself as the man who can solve these long-standing problems, but the palpable sense of urgency in his tone is warranted. After a favourable run (at least on paper), Chelsea’s fixture list gets distinctly tougher from here on in; the average league position of their final 11 Premier League opponents is 8.4. Those games must also be navigated in conjunction with the business end of the Champions League and FA Cup.
The reality of the Premier League table is that even with five Champions League qualification spots, it is likeliest that one of Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea will miss out. A long season offers no shortage of moments for retrospective lament but if elite European football is taken away from Stamford Bridge next season, this one may well linger longest for Rosenior.