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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Jonathan Liew at Stamford Bridge

Chelsea restore the natural order but must defy it against Barcelona

Lauren James runs with the ball during Chelsea's 3-0 victory over Manchester City.
Lauren James showed pure remorseless hunger in a brilliant display to help Chelsea to a 3-0 victory over Manchester City. Photograph: Alexander Canillas/SPP/Shutterstock

Do Chelsea get it done? You might as well ask in what direction the apple falls from the tree. There is an inevitability to them here, an infallible logic to their challenges and their combinations and their fighting and their running, a sense that the natural order of the universe is simply reasserting itself.

As it turned out the last half-hour at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday was a kind of omen, a trailer for the feature presentation. Here the intensity so lacking in the first leg in Manchester was there from the start. By half-time City are red-faced, not out of embarrassment  but exhaustion, as if not just the energy but the simple resolve has been drained from them. It’s three-nil, and to be quite honest Chelsea left a few more out there.

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