Chelsea’s dour draw with Brentford is a concerning byproduct of football’s endless expansion | OneFootball

It’s hard to know what felt longer: Sunday’s 0-0 draw at Brentford, or the time since Chelsea looked like title challengers. Their season is far from over, and could yet end with success, but there’s a slight sense of drift right now. That is only in-keeping with the wider Premier League season, to be fair, which should prompt a wider discussion. Enzo Maresca’s side really shouldn’t have had a match within 72 hours of their last, which he felt was “unfair”.

Even within that, there is still a pertinent debate to be had about what Chelsea are, and could be. Many within the Premier League would say that should be a club facing up to significant punishment, given the investigation into irregular payments from Roman Abramovich’s time and the current talks with Uefa over potential financial rule breaches from the sale of the women’s team to a sister company.

It sums up the team right now, though, that developments off the pitch remain so much more colourful. That is separate to the toil for Champions League qualification, but may influence it.

There was so little urgency to the play in the Brentford game, despite the reality that Chelsea need to win for qualification, all the more so given PSR concerns.

That diminished impetus has been a recent trend, regardless of Maresca’s reasonable complaints about the scheduling. It has especially been the case on the road, given this was the eighth successive away game without victory for Chelsea in the Premier League.

Five of those have involved blanks, going back to the 0-0 away to Everton just before Christmas. The other three games have meanwhile only featured three Chelsea goals.

That 0-0 at Everton coincidentally came after a 2-1 home win over Brentford, that was the last of a five-game winning streak. It was also the last time Chelsea looked like challengers.

The truth even then was that they were overperforming, and results have inevitably levelled out since. The growing concern is the extent to which they’ve levelled out.

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Enzo Maresca (left) decided to rest Cole Palmer due to Chelsea's busy schedule (Zac Goodwin/PA Wire)

So many of their matches are so flat, which very directly translate into flat passes across the back or from Robert Sanchez. This feels all the more pronounced with Maresca away from home. The Italian is ultimately a disciple of Pep Guardiola’s positional game, and more dogmatic about that ideology than most. The wider game has now evolved so much, however, that that positional game in its purest form can look rather featureless against new approaches that involve more risk-taking.

Thomas Frank arguably brings more of the latter, and the Brentford coach was unusually caustic in repeatedly bringing up Chelsea’s spending after the game. He was also insistent his team had the better of the game, with more clear chances. The latter was certainly true. Frank pointed to how Chelsea mostly had a series of long shots, beyond one Reece James header. Against that, Mikkel Damsgaard, Keane Lewis-Potter and Sepp van den Berg all had misses from close to goal.

Much of that was down to how Maresca did not start Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson due to the schedule, and you could feel it as much as you could see it. There was so little energy or ingenuity.

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Chelsea vs Brentford was a dour affair despite the stakes for both teams (John Walton/PA Wire)

Chelsea are so dependent on the duo for a sense of vibrancy. There are two wider points.

One is the type of squad that Chelsea’s headline-dominating ownership have put together. They may have “spent a bit” on transfer fees, as Frank was keen to repeat, but that has not translated into wages. That’s because it’s still just a squad with a lot of potential rather than actual product.

It’s all the more relevant given that co-owner Todd Boehly has spoken about how the club have looked “at dynasties” in sport and how they have “super-star captains”, ie players with that greater depth of personality. There’s a fair question over how many Chelsea have. Jadon Sancho should be a player consistently complementing Palmer at this point in his career, rather than someone who only offers occasional flashes. There was one good run here.

There is then the choice of manager, and how Maresca fits into this pervading tactical profile. His football could maybe do with that bit more charisma. A bit more charisma, however, might bring more questions about some of the recruitment.

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Palmer’s introduction provided some confidence but not enough to make a difference (Getty Images)

For Maresca’s part, he was willing to criticise the Premier League’s scheduling. Chelsea finished at around 10pm on Thursday night and had to play again at 2pm Sunday. That is eight hours short of Fifa’s own guidance of 72-hour breaks, which the world governing body only occasionally follow themselves.

Many will point to how Chelsea regularly play Thursday-Sunday due to the Europa Conference, but the difference here was this was the same competition. The Premier League could easily have had them play Wednesday rather than Thursday.

Maresca directly stated that he had decisions to make on his squad because many weren’t at 100%. Frank agreed with him on this point - even while making other pointed comments on the depth of Chelsea’s squad.

It’s also where a certain sympathy with Maresca - or at least his club - diminishes. The summer’s newly expanded Club World Cup is already playing havoc with the calendar, but Chelsea’s ownership are all in on that. That’s because they can see the prize money, at $18m a game.

Games like this are the other cost of that. There’s then the other side of all this. The Premier League aren’t going to give Chelsea or Manchester City a delayed start to next season, because they don’t see why they should change their own competition for a tournament unilaterally imposed on them with no consultation. Frank was scathing, stating that nobody wants it, and he won’t watch it. “I’ll enjoy my summer.” Against that, Fifa are meanwhile known to believe that the Premier League should be reduced to 18 teams. None of the clubs are going to vote for that.

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Brentford were the better team on the day but couldn’t force a winning goal (Zac Goodwin/PA Wire)

No football stakeholder is really giving anything up, which means something has to give elsewhere. Perhaps it’s in actual games like this.

The Champions League places are one of the few objectives with something left to play for this season, and yet you wouldn’t have thought it from this match.

Is this going to influence how it ends? Are the remaining qualifiers going to be decided by who has the most left in the tank? Could that serve Newcastle United, say, since they only have league games?

At the same time, who finishes fifth isn’t exactly the most alluring narrative for the end of the season. The very fact it will go to fifth place - and potentially 11 English qualifiers for European competition in all - is just another problem from football’s endless expansion without thought. It should be acknowledged there’s obviously a romance and glory to getting into Europe’s premier competition, especially for Nottingham Forest or Newcastle. Maresca stressed how important it is for Chelsea.

You just wouldn’t have guessed it from the performance, and they are far from alone there. Even the Manchester derby, which involved the same stakes for City, was drab.

It’s mostly more money, and more games. A bit like football as a whole right now. As for more entertainment? Maybe don’t watch the highlights of this one.