Six Red Cards, One Season: Do Chelsea Have a Discipline Problem?
Six red cards before March, points thrown away from winning positions and another avoidable sending off against Burnley have turned discipline into Chelsea’s loudest problem, with consequences that now threaten their top four push.
Wesley Fofana trudged off the Stamford Bridge pitch on Saturday, head down, with 18 minutes still to play against Burnley and a one-match ban now stacking up ahead of next Sunday’s trip to Arsenal.
His second yellow card, a needless lunge on James Ward-Prowse while already booked, cost Chelsea two points.
Zian Flemming headed in from a Ward-Prowse corner in stoppage time, and a game the hosts had controlled from the fourth minute ended 1-1.
It was, by now, a familiar feeling.
Fofana’s sending off was Chelsea’s sixth of the Premier League season, two more than any other side, and the most in a single campaign in the club’s history.
Reports indicate that the previous record of five red cards in a single Premier League season had been shared across four separate seasons, in 2005-06, 2007-08, 2009-10 and 2015-16. The west London side have now broken it in late February, with 11 games still to play.
The list of those who have walked makes for uncomfortable reading. Robert Sanchez was dismissed against Manchester United in September. Trevoh Chalobah went at Brighton six days later. Joao Pedro was sent off against Benfica in the Champions League the following week. Malo Gusto followed against Nottingham Forest.
Then Marc Cucurella at Fulham in January, a red card that arrived in the 22nd minute and forced Chelsea to play more than an hour with ten men at Craven Cottage. Moises Caicedo rounded off the set against Arsenal at the end of November, his studs planted into the ankle of Mikel Merino in a challenge that looked bad in real time and even worse on the pitchside monitor. And now Fofana.
What makes the Burnley game even painful is that Chelsea did not need to lose anything. They were ahead. They were comfortable. Joao Pedro had bundled the ball in from close range inside four minutes, and Burnley, who had lost 16 consecutive Premier League games before beating Crystal Palace the last weekend, barely had a sight of goal.
The second was coming. And then, for no obvious reason, Fofana went in on Ward-Prowse when Ward-Prowse was playing the ball backwards.
It was just unnecessary, and unnecessary, at this point, has become a pattern.
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The ages of those involved do not fully explain it away. Sanchez is 28. Caicedo is 24 and had played 130 Premier League games before his first dismissal. Fofana is 25 and a defender who has been playing top-level football since his Leicester City days. These are not children finding their feet. And yet the word that comes up most often in connection with each incident is the same one: needless.
What these players share is a lack of composure at the moments that most demand it, a willingness to make the rash challenge, take the unnecessary risk, respond to provocation when doing nothing would have been the wiser choice.
And that, over the course of a season, is either a cultural issue or a coaching one, or both.
Liam Rosenior, who took over from Enzo Maresca in January and has steadied the ship in most respects, acknowledged after the final whistle on Saturday that the sending-off and the defending of set pieces were the two things he needed to fix before the business end of the season.
Chelsea have now dropped four points at home against newly promoted sides in the last few weeks alone, drawn against Leeds after blowing a two-goal lead, and drawn against the Clarets today. Both times, a red card was the turning point.
The timing is particularly damaging. Fofana will miss the Arsenal game next week, joining Levi Colwill, who has been out since tearing his ACL, on the sidelines at the Emirates. Cucurella is also a doubt with a thigh problem, meaning Rosenior could be without three of his natural defensive options for one of the hardest away days on the calendar.
This is a problem the squad brought entirely on themselves.
Chelsea sit fifth in the table, level on points with Manchester United and fighting to finish in the top four. They have the talent to do it. Joao Pedro has scored ten league goals. Palmer, when fit and focused, looks like one of the best players in the country.
Pedro Neto is a constant threat down the left. The squad, assembled at large cost over several years and several managers, has more than enough quality to secure Champions League football.
But a team that has been reduced to ten men more often than any other side this season cannot keep relying on its own resilience to rescue situations it should never be in.
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