Joao Felix brought his skill to Chelsea but left his brains in Madrid

Joao Felix showed Chelsea what they’ve been missing for an hour and what they will now miss again for the next three games. The skillful halfwit. 

Felix’s arrival at Chelsea should have excited more than it has. This is a guy who cost Atletico Madrid £120m in 2019. That’s a superstar fee for someone who has too rarely looked like a superstar in the three years since. But Felix and Diego Simeone always felt like a strange pairing, and having escaped the clutches of one of the most obstinate and polarising managers in world football, there’s more than a good chance Felix will thrive away from the Wanda Metropolitano and he showed promising signs at Craven Cottage on Thursday.

It’s just a six-month loan deal, with no option to buy, and was agreed only after Felix signed a contract extension until 2027. Make no mistake, this is a wonderful deal for Atletico, who have made £9m and don’t have to pay £270,000 a week for a player Simeone puts on the bench. Felix will return to Madrid at the start of next season – hopefully having regained some confidence through game time at Chelsea – when Atletico will likely have a new manager. They’re laughing.

But needs must for Chelsea, who can’t score or create goals, and have signed someone who has consistently done both. Despite being far from a first choice under Simeone in the last two seasons, Felix has averaged a goal or an assist every 97 minutes in La Liga.

It will be good for Graham Potter to have one of his own. It’s not clear whether he wanted Felix specifically or if the 23-year-old is more a body to aid in a desperate situation, but it should be comforting for him to have a player bought under his watch to lean on, rather than Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who appears to have been sulking for all but the first five days of his Chelsea stay, after which Thomas Tuchel was sacked.

The fact Aubameyang stayed on the bench despite Potter making all five subsitutions, including a late quadruple as Chelsea chased the game, was telling. The 33-year-old may indeed have played his last gamefor the club. What a mess.

But sulk or not, forwards have typically struggled at Chelsea in recent times. Mason Mount aside, members of Chelsea’s front three in the last two-and-a-half years have ranged from mediocre to p*ss poor. Felix took less than two minutes to show a quality they have dearly missed in that time.

His nutmeg on Tim Ream was delightful, but it was the run off the ball down the wing that…