Chelsea scored, won and played well. That’s happened all too rarely under Graham Potter, who may have proved to the fans in one game that he’s worth sticking with.
It was a game which belied form and presumed confidence levels. Chelsea’s win over Leeds was just their second in 2023. Dortmund had won ten games on the bounce. But as yellow smoke poured from the wall behind Alexander Meyer, Chelsea preyed on Dortmund’s apparent jaundice.
Chelsea snapped into challenges, created chance after chance, and Potter, criticised for meekness in the face of adversity in recent weeks, was seen shouting on the touchline and geeing up the fans at Stamford Bridge, who were fully behind their team for the first time in a long while. Everyone was on it.
Joao Felix and Kai Havertz both had good chances to score and level the tie early on, but didn’t, as has been their and Chelsea’s wont this season. And it felt suspiciously like this could well be another game that got away.
When your luck’s out, it’s out, but it won’t be forever. And in a 15-minute spell at the end of the first half, Chelsea saw the fortune tide turn. Havertz rattled a shot off the inside of the post which rolled agonisingly across the goal line, then finished a chance beautifully only for it to be ruled offside. Kalidou Koulibaly missed an open goal from four yards out. But then Raheem Sterling got the rub of the green.
Sometimes you need one to come off your knee, and sometimes you need an air shot, then for the ball to come off your knee and fall perfectly for you to rattle it into the roof of the net.
And with the Gods then well and truly smiling after they had given Chelsea the finger for months of Potter’s reign, Chelsea then won a penalty through Ben Chilwell smashing the ball at Marius Wolf’s hand from a few yards away, and then got two chances to score said penalty due to some eagle-eyed VAR work.
That was a huge moment for Havertz, who saw his first effort come off the post, before slotting the second into the side-netting of that same post. He’s not and never will be a prolific goalscorer, and that’s an unfair expectation that’s been put upon him, but failing to score would have soured his superb performance beyond sweetening.
He played a big role in the first goal, holding the ball up and creating the opening with a tidy backheel, and was key to pretty much all of Chelsea’s effective attacking play, taking an extra beat in possession in a frantic game to…
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