Gary Neville hit out at the “disgrace” served up by Chelsea as they endured a horrendous start against Arsenal.
The Blues travelled to the Emirates Stadium aiming to restore at least some personal pride against their London rivals after what has been a wretched season. It could not have gone worse for Frank Lampard's side though.
They immediately looked defensively frail as they were swamped by the Gunners. Their start was encapsulated by Spanish goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga and his nervous beginning to the game. He at first crashed into the post before then launching the ball away following an easy collect.
That left Manchester United icon Neville scratching his head at what was another woeful start. Taking to Twitter, he wrote: “Are Chelsea’s players ok? How bad? Probably score now.”
Despite somewhat amusingly tipping the Blues to take the lead at the Emirates, the exact opposite happened as Gunners captain Martin Odegaard crashed in a brilliant opener for Mikel Arteta's men. After the celebrations for the home faithful had subsided, they then took aim at the rival support by suggesting that the Blues were in a battle to avoid relegation.
In the aftermath of Odegaard’s opener, they chanted: “You’re going down.”
Why has this season gone so wrong for Chelsea? Share your thoughts in the comments below
Whilst the Blues should have enough points to avoid being dragged into the scrap at the bottom of the table - a nine-point gap between themselves and the drop zone - things got drastically worse. Odegaard doubled up his evening’s work before Gabriel Jesus put the game out of sight before the break.
That triggered both Neville and the Arsenal fans to launch into yet more brutal assessments. The Man Utd icon followed up his tweet with another reading: “Chelsea are a disgrace out there.”
In the meantime, supporters continued to have fun at their rivals’ expense with another chant that will no doubt cut deep for the Chelsea support. They sang: “Are you Tottenham in disguise?” - referencing Spurs’ woeful starts to games over recent weeks.
Neville’s punditry colleague Jamie Carragher was watching the game at the Emirates in his role for Sky Sports and was similarly scathing. “Absolutely superb from Arsenal and absolutely shocking from Chelsea,” he said.
“This club is an absolute mess right at this moment. And, this could get an awful lot worse for Frank Lampard and his staff, and Chelsea supporters.”
Arsenal’s 3-0 lead at half-time left them sitting top of the table with a one-point advantage over title rivals Manchester City at the time of writing. Meanwhile, Chelsea were left languishing in 12th and now look certain to endure their worst-ever Premier League finish.
