Todd Boehly has finally been right about something. Chelsea’s season has been an embarrassment, as he told their players after defeat to Brighton. Losing to Real Madrid was not: in the context of their season, it was one of the more respectable results. Next season, with a fixture list shorn of the glamour of such games, they may dream of such matches. But the identity of the victors gave a curiously dignified end to it all.
Because Chelsea’s season is over. It has been a hubristic humiliation, an expensive embarrassment. Now, 10 points off seventh, they cannot even eye a Conference League spot. Never before has a club spent so much to achieve so little. For Boehly and Clearlake Capital, attempts to reinvent the wheel instead finished with them finding the reverse gear. Chelsea are on course for their lowest finish since 1996, on their longest winless run since 1993, out of both domestic cups without scoring for the first time since 1974, on course for their lowest goal tally in the league since the 1920s. Exiting the Champions League to Real Madrid on a night of wholehearted effort feels a high point in comparison.
