Few do implosions better than Chelsea.
Elland Road on Sunday will firmly add an unwanted collapse to Thomas Tuchel's regime. There were echoes of the 5-2 demolition at home to West Brom in April of 2021 as Jack Harrison's third went in to seal Chelsea's grim fate in a clumsy fashion.
Or shades of the 4-1 humbling to Brentford back in April as a frazzled defence was hit with two goals they could not recover from quickly. By the time Kalidou Kouliably saw red for a petulant tug of a shirt he never needed to pull, you'd be forgiven for bursting into pained laughter. It was just one of those days.
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And maybe, it was. Perhaps by the time the World Cup at Qatar has finished, and we return to whatever the Premier League will look like on Boxing Day, this humiliation will look like an anomaly.
There will likely be naively extreme conclusions made from this. Before Everton, Chelsea could not get top four. After Spurs, they definitely would. After Leeds, forget about it.
September hasn't even arrived yet, but Tuchel has problems to solve. And some of them feel deep-rooted and familiar.
Three games have gone, and none of his attacking players have clicked into scoring gear. Raheem Sterling has only had one big chance created for him and six shots in total. The leaky defence that encapsulated those tiring remaining weeks of last season have returned. Tactical questions are being posed in the direction of the German.
From 3-4-3 to 4-3-3 and 4-2-2-2, little about this performance carried on the good work at Stamford Bridge last Sunday. This felt like I had been transported all the way back to the Camping World Stadium, sweating in the humidity of Orlando as a disorganised Chelsea was carved apart against Arsenal.
For all Chelsea could rightly bemoan poor officiating last Sunday, all four of the goals conceded over the previous two weekends are the effect of individual mishaps or poor organisation from set pieces.
"We were able to cope with their style, be the better team, be two goals ahead." Tuchel said after, "But then we give two goals away, and then the belief and body language was not like it was in the last match."
The decision to persist with Reece James as a centre-back might seem irrelevant in a game where your own keeper decides to do a Cruyff turn whilst being pressed, but it reflects a wider issue with Tuchel's current approach.
In a game where Chelsea could exploit Leeds' narrow formation, one of the Blues' most productive outlets was placed firmly out of it. A needless handbrake in a season when Tuchel needs to kick this underperforming attack into overdrive.
Conor Gallagher's challenging debut again showed signs his midfield needs reconfiguring when N'Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic are injured. Gallagher looked flustered but more confident in the second half when he was able to run beyond the ball as he did for Crystal Palace last year. Jorginho failed to stifle Leeds pressure, nor did Mason Mount get on the ball enough to exploit space between the lines.
Apart from tactical tweaks, the trust in Kai Havertz looks unfounded. The forward continues to drift through games, strolling from side to side, floating and gliding like one of those ghosts in the main hall at Hogwarts. With no Romelu Lukaku or Timo Werner to blame, that light looks a lot harsher now.
£140m has been spent by Todd Boehly and the Clearlake consortium in an already chaotic summer. Few can argue that Tuchel has not "been backed". He is set for more additions, taking this window's spend beyond the record of most spent by the club in one period.
But as was discussed before a ball was even kicked, the relationship between quality of squad vs coaching influence leans unfavourably toward Tuchel. Especially in an attacking sense when threats like Sterling start to look lost. Things will start to stack up against Tuchel.
Chelsea's mentality can be questioned. The way they lost their heads after a setback, the finishing in the final third, which still lacks precision, or Edouard Mendy thinking he is Lionel Messi when he's doing a decent impression of Ed de Goey.
No amount of money will fix an approach that's this cautious, one-dimensional or throwing talent into roles that do not express their best attributes. Tuchel needs to present evidence of progression soon.
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