Going into Sunday afternoon's Premier League clash with Crystal Palace, Chelsea head coach Graham Potter would have been fully aware that three points for his side was imperative. No matter how they did it, the Blues needed the win so badly.
Chelsea arrived at an emotional Stamford Bridge – with a tribute to the late Gianluca Vialli happening on the day – having lost seven of their last 10 matches in all competitions. Thursday night's 2-1 defeat to Fulham essentially summed up where Potter and his team are at the moment. Disjointed, depleted and extremely low on confidence.
However, there was one reason to be excited. Benoit Badiashile was making his debut for Chelsea after signing for around £34million earlier this month. The 21-year-old central defender had been in the last two matchday squads against Manchester City and Fulham, but was trusted from the start against Crystal Palace.
"We have also welcomed David Fofana and Benoit Badiashile to the squad," Potter said in his programme notes. "They are both very talented players and they will add a lot to our group.
"Now we have to start picking up results. This is clearly a challenging time for us and we have to rise to it and produce the performances that will bring us out the other side of this difficult spell and propel us back towards the top end of the table."
Potter called on his players to produce a big performance and they did. Not in the way where it was pristine Chelsea playing with confidence and a swagger, it was a gritty display against a dangerous Palace side.
Badiashile epitomised that for the hosts in west London. Coming in for Kalidou Koulibaly, who has been out of sorts since returning from the World Cup break, Badiashile started as the left centre-back alongside Thiago Silva in a back-four formation.
The first thing that strikes you about Badiashile when watching him in person is his height; his physical presence. At 6ft 4ins, the French defender was the tallest man out on the pitch for Chelsea.
Early on, he was winning plenty of headers and asserting his dominance physically against the speedy Palace attackers. There was one slight wobble, though, when Wilfried Zaha barged Badiashile off the ball and got away from him. It was an early indication, if he needed pointing out, about the physicality of the Premier League.
Badiashile, however, recovered from that well and did not let anything similar happen again. He looked extremely comfortable and assured while in possession and tried – albeit failed – with a couple of long diagonal passes to try and get Chelsea into dangerous attacking positions. It was encouraging to see.
He looked like he was enjoying himself on his debut for his new club. Badiashile will face tougher tests than what he did on Sunday, but as far as debuts go, you cannot really hope for much more.
"I thought Benoit did well, really well," Potter told reporters after the game. "Kalidou Koulibaly has had a lot of football recently and with the turnaround from Thursday night to today, that was a consideration for us. You can see his quality.
"He passes the ball well, when he needed to head it out he did, he's adapting to the Premier League and that will take time because he's a young player. I think he'll get better and better but the first game was very positive."
Potter mentioned the fatigue of Koulibaly being the reason he did not play today. Whether or not the Senegal international comes back into the side for the trip up to Liverpool at the weekend remains to be seen, but he and Chelsea could benefit if he has a spell out of the team.
It's a big ask for Badiashile to start at Anfield, albeit against an out-of-sorts Liverpool side, but he really couldn't have staked his claim any more than he has. It will be a different task to Palace against the Reds but one that could be huge for his development.
The former AS Monaco man was signed with more of an eye on the future, but the situation at Chelsea means he could get more of a chance this season. It's only one game so we cannot get too carried away, but going off that 90 minutes, it looks like the club have a real gem on their books in Badiashile.
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