STANFORD BRIDGE - Chelsea had a strange feeling of discomfort even before the second-half collapse, even early in Sunday's 2-4 defeat at home to Wolves.
Prior to Wednesday's 4-1 defeat to Liverpool, Chelsea had shown signs of resilience and aggression at least after a testing holiday period. They have won six of their seven games since Christmas Eve, drawing at home to Aston Villa in the FA Cup two weeks ago.
But against Wolves, those steady steps were reversed, with Wolves opening the scoring twice in the opening 120 seconds. Although the Blues will be the team to break the deadlock, they will soon give the visitors a chance to equalise, with Moise Caicedo, the maker of the opener, being deprived of his place cheaply in midfield.
Chelsea fans were outraged by their team's pace of walking and Wolves took advantage of the restlessness and lazy movement that was prevalent on the pitch to add a second, partly due to Axel Disasi's deflected side. At half-time, the hosts were booed and fans near Mauricio Pochettino's technical area yelled expletives at the players as they left the pitch. A sense of mutiny is already in danger of exploding.
After the restart, Wolves scored a third goal and the knife came out. Home supporters sang the name of former club Roman Abramovich, who was **ousted** by the UK after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a detail that should not be forgotten, and then happily jokingly chanted "We're coming on". Marlo Gusto then foolishly missed a penalty and Wolves were soon awarded a fourth.
Thiago Silva's wife has been crypticly on Twitter about the club's potentially dire future when he scored from a corner, but that didn't leave Stamford Bridge quickly empty.
In Todd Boehly's Blueco era, Chelsea had a lot of poor performances. There were a lot of run-and-dry periods without a win. But none of them felt as catastrophic as this recent failure.
Wolves won the league at Stamford Bridge for the first time since 1979, completing their first double against Chelsea since 1975. Now, the Blues are embracing these feats at an astonishing pace, similar to Manchester United's rapid decline following Sir Alex Ferguson's departure. With three weeks to go until the season's cup final against the best team in the country so far, Chelsea have hit a record low. What kind of goodwill or optimism Pochettino's project has salvaged in recent weeks has now vanished.
For Chelsea, it is increasingly unlikely that they will enter Europe via the Premier League, and even if they pack up their own house, it is a huge question whether they have enough quality to leapfrog at least four other teams between now and May? Winning the Carabao Cup could save their season, but it was an almost impossible task. Pochettino doesn't shy away from football being a results-oriented business, nor is he shying away from ensuring Chelsea don't finish 12th in the Premier League again. He has no time to prove that he is the one to solve this mess.