Watching Alejandro Garnacho walk on to the field at Wembley with four minutes to go in the FA Cup Final told us much about Chelsea. Garnacho cost £40million from Manchester United. They thought it was a coup and, as so often is the case at Stamford Bridge, they were wrong.
Four minutes to save a cup final. That kind of sums it up. If temporary coach Calum McFarlane really believed Garnacho had it in him to write Chelsea’s name on the trophy, he may just have given him a little longer than that.
As for Garnacho himself, he is still only 21. So we must be careful. Older and wiser and better players than he have been spat out of the Chelsea threshing machine. None of this is his fault.
Even so, it was hard to see him and not feel some pity, for him and the supporters of the club he supports.
He was a sight wasn’t he? A symbol of lots of money spent seemingly in haste on players who, for various reasons, haven’t proved worth it.
Marc Cucurella and Alejandro Garnacho stand in misery after Chelsea’s FA Cup final loss
Vacant and not exactly switched on to the job in hand, he looked like he’d just been dragged from a tattoo parlour having won a prize to be a footballer for the day.
Not surprisingly, it was a move that didn’t pay off.
And so Chelsea and McFarlane move on to tomorrow night’s home game with Tottenham in the Premier League with not much to play for apart from trying to push their great rivals’ relegation scramble until the very last day.
After that a final match at Sunderland beckons and then the managerial wheel spins again. Xabi Alonso is to be the next man to try and fix Chelsea’s problem and at least there are early signs of a shift in the way things will work off the King’s Road. It’s a start.
We are told that Chelsea will move their sights towards buying players ready to play effective Premier League football immediately this summer and that Alonso, crucially, will be at the heart of that.
It shouldn’t feel like such a big move – shouldn’t ALL Premier League clubs be aiming to do this? – but at poor old mixed-up Chelsea it does feel like that.
McFarlane’s version of Chelsea actually did okay on Saturday. They were well in the game until Antoine Semenyo won it for Manchester City out of nothing.
But it’s a squad shot through with flaws, both in terms of personnel and certainly culture.
Marc Cucurella – for all his talents – is one of the most unpleasant players to watch in the Premier League. He was in the referee’s ear for 90 minutes.
Reece James – the captain – wears a permanent scowl. Has someone upset him?
And then there is Cole Palmer – sublimely talented but trending backwards in his effectiveness – and Enzo Fernandez who is expensive and… well… expensive.
Not that this group are the worst of it. Not at all. There is some talent in there. But they provide a snapshot of the mess that is Alonso’s to clean up.
So, yes, let a man who understands the Premier League – and understands winning – have his fingerprints on the Chelsea recruitment model.
Let Alonso put his own personality and sense of dignity on a squad that can look like a rabble at times. And then give him some time.
If he gets all that, he may have half a chance. Without it, he has none.
Final lessons need to be learned
Pep Guardiola’s 20th trophy for City was well-deserved and his post-match pop at the ‘service’ – a word that is doing some heavy lifting – provided by the Avanti West Coast train line was well-timed.
‘We spent six hours from Manchester to here on Friday, Guardiola said.
‘The trains are a little bit of a problem in this country.’
Football fans travelling up and down the country will feel Guardiola’s pain and it’s an issue that may yet impact on our hosting of the 2028 European Championships.
At least Saturday’s final was played at 3pm which gave City fans an opportunity to try and get home afterwards.
The FA’s showpiece fixture of the season should ring fence that kick-off time going forward.
Foden and Bowen face nervous wait
Thomas Tuchel was at Wembley and it’s hard to escape the feeling the embrace he offered Phil Foden at the trophy presentation may start to look like a consolation hug by the time the England manager names his World Cup squad on Friday.
I would like to think that Morgan Gibbs-White’s performance as Nottingham Forest lost narrowly at Manchester United will have given Tuchel a late nudge as to his varied talents but I fear that ship may have sailed already.
In terms of England’s fringe players, it was a good weekend for Ollie Watkins – who I thoroughly expect to be in the 26-man squad – but less so for West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen, who has not quite managed to drive his team towards Premier League safety in the way we thought he may.
Maybe he’s just tired of carrying that team. He’s been doing it a while.
Liverpool would be foolish not to try to buy him if and when West Ham’s relegation is confirmed in the days to come.
Thomas Tuchel and Phil Foden share an embrace at Wembley – but will they at the World Cup?
Rooney is right – and wrong – on ‘selfish’ Mo
My theory was that Mo Salah would wait until he got to the World Cup with Egypt before unloading on Arne Slot. It would have been reasonable to expect him to be out of the building before he started to burn it down.
But it turns out I was wrong about that. It turns out that Salah wanted to have one final shot on goal before he left Anfield and on this occasion he didn’t miss.
Which is a rarity this season, a campaign that has seen Liverpool’s greatest ever forward play 26 Premier League games for Liverpool and score just seven times.
Of all Liverpool’s failing players over the course of the last nine months, Salah has been among the worst. His contribution to Liverpool’s startling decline has been overwhelming.
Saturday’s social media post – aimed squarely at Liverpool manager Slot – was a final selfish act delivered towards the end of a season that will end with Salah’s farewell at Anfield against Brentford on Sunday.
Salah will be fit again after hamstring trouble for the weekend’s final fixture. He is available to play and knows that the strongest cards are now his.
Wayne Rooney’s suggestion in his BBC podcast that Salah should be left out as some form of punishment on Sunday are understandable and come from a footballer who knows exactly what it is to sacrifice yourself for the team. Rooney did this for years at Manchester United so that Cristiano Ronaldo could shine.
But Rooney misses a point on this occasion. He under-estimates the depth of Salah’s political understanding of what has become a very personal battle with his manager.
If Slot doesn’t play Salah against Brentford, he weakens his hand with a significant chunk of the Liverpool fanbase that already want him out of the door.
Mohamed Salah has a strong political understanding of his battle with Arne Slot
Liverpool may well need a victory to ensure Champions League qualification and that’s the one thing that may keep Slot in a job.
Salah will know his manager cannot risk a revolt from the Kop before his team kick-off on Sunday. He has his manager in a corner, he knows it and he is kicking him hard.
It’s a horrible, ugly mess and one that demeans a good football club. What an awful way to go. How undignified.
Salah could have helped his team and his manager this season after being given a two-year contract worth north of £350,000-a-week last summer. But in terms of his form he has essentially been missing for the large part of months that have followed.
Liverpool have given Salah a free transfer this summer. They made that decision out of respect to a legend. He has not repaid the club in kind.
Maybe his cruel words have sought to distance himself from Liverpool’s shambolic season as he seeks a new club this summer. Maybe it’s a clumsy bid to protect his own value.
Or maybe he just can’t help himself.
Salah has not been a prolific communicator during his years at Anfield. When he has said something, it has tended to be self-serving. Rarely, if ever, have his comments appeared to have the best interests of Liverpool at heart.
And this is the way it will be until the end, it seems. Liverpool have been a mess this season and much of that sits at Slot’s door. The argument for retaining the Dutchman is getting thinner. Salah is not the only player to feel frustrated.
But some Liverpool players will reach the finish line with a modicum of credit in the bank and others will not.
It’s strange how, in football, some players – for all that a club may have done for them – remain utterly incapable of viewing life beyond the extremities of their own narrow and shallow world.
Coleman deserved better
Proof that there are other ways to leave a football club arrived at Old Trafford and St James Park as Casemiro and Kieran Trippier – among other Newcastle players – said goodbye to home supporters. Both men were emotional and grateful and understandably so.
Few, meanwhile, have done more than Seamus Coleman, whose final home match for Everton ended in a defeat to Sunderland that rather summed up a mixed season for the club at their new home down by the Mersey.
A great atmosphere and fan experience has unfortunately been balanced out by 19 Premier League games that have yielded only six wins. That has been nowhere near good enough for a club that wishes to be progressive.
As for Coleman, few players have provided better service, leadership or indeed value to Everton in the club’s history.
Signed for £60,000 from Sligo Rovers in 2009, Coleman has played 373 times in the league for Everton and, just as importantly, has been pivotal to establishing dressing room culture.
Everton fans were so upset by their team’s showing yesterday that the Hill-Dickinson Stadium was almost empty by the time Coleman took his lap of honour. The 37-year-old deserved rather better than that.
Time to can the in-game noise
Trippier was emotional on the substitutes’ bench after leaving the field with victory over West Ham secured.
It was a particularly dreadful time, then, for Sky to try and ‘grab a few words’ with the Newcastle captain.
In-game interviews have proved as pointless and anodyne as we all predicted and should be binned ahead of next season.
Meanwhile the BBC’s decision to have Darren Cann as a refereeing expert alongside Guy Mowbray and Alan Shearer on their FA Cup Final commentary team was an experiment we can only hope does not follow us to the World Cup.
‘Yes I think he got that one right,’ we heard Cann repeatedly say of referee Darren England throughout 90 pretty turgid minutes.
Kieran Trippier was emotional on the substitutes’ bench after leaving the field at Newcastle
We must fix football’s worst rule
At Old Trafford, Michael Carrick’s United team earned the eleventh win of his sixteen games in charge. Of those wins, eight have been by a single goal and that shows just how fine the margins are between success and something else at the top of the Premier League.
Much fuss has been made on this occasion about the handball from Bryan Mbeumo that appeared to play a part in the build up to Matheus Cunha’s goal.
There is not an awful lot of point debating it here other than to say handball is simply the most overly-complicated and therefore the worst rule in football.
Until it is changed by footballer’s lawmakers at IFAB, this state of confusion will endure.
Emery proves his own fans wrong
It was only two weeks ago that Aston Villa fans of my acquaintance were declaring their season over after Unai Emery’s under-strength team lost at home to Tottenham.
They may be thinking about this as they head to Istanbul this week ahead of the biggest game in their club’s recent history, the Europa League final against Freiburg.
Villa moved on from that Spurs defeat just as this column suggested they would.
Emery’s first team returned fit and rested to demolish Forest in the second leg of their Europa semi-final and have used that momentum and adrenaline to smash Liverpool and make sure they are already in next season’s Champions League.
It’s been fabulous management by Emery. With a place in the big competition secured for 2026/27, Villa can concentrate purely on winning on Wednesday and I am sure they will.
Silva would be a loss
Marco Silva continues to talk in riddles about his Fulham future while in Portugal they say that a deal for him replace Jose Mourinho at Benfica is done.
If that one is true, it would be a great shame.
After his work at Hull and Watford and a chastening experience at Everton – from where he was jettisoned far too soon – it would be a shame if a talented coach doesn’t get an opportunity to move to the next level in the Premier League.
Silva is hard to manage and Fulham have done well to keep him focused for five years. But he is also a talented manager and it would be a shame for English football to lose the 48-year-old for the second time.
Marco Silva is a talented manager and should be kept in the Premier League is possible
Hearts stuck in a muddle
Members of the Arsenal team who famously defeated Liverpool at Anfield to win the league on the final day of the 1989 season still believe that they were helped by the fact that their opponents only needed a draw.
‘I think Liverpool were confused,’ former Arsenal right-back Lee Dixon told me recently.
‘They clearly didn’t know whether to stick or twist.’
Watching Hearts succumb to late Celtic pressure to lose at Parkhead on Saturday was to be reminded of the difficulties of playing a game of football you know you don’t have to actually win.
Deeper and deeper Derek McInnes’ team went as Celtic sought the late winner that eventually came. It was quite natural but also quite damaging too.
I feel desperately sorry for Hearts but remain convinced that had they really needed to win Saturday’s final game, they would have done so.
