Football: Chelsea can’t buy a goal in Fulham stalemate
Sign up now: Get the biggest sports news in your inbox
Enzo Fernandez (right) looked comfortable and showed touches of class, spraying pinpoint passes and timing his tackles well.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
LONDON - Chelsea manager Graham Potter pleaded for time to gel his expensive collection of new stars, after the Blues were held 0-0 at home by Fulham in the Premier League on Friday.
Enzo Fernandez made his Chelsea debut, after becoming the most expensive player in British football history with a £106.8 million (S$170.4 million) move from Benfica on transfer deadline day.
Mykhailo Mudryk was also given his Stamford Bridge bow, while Noni Madueke and David Datro Fofana came off the bench for their league debuts.
Chelsea’s record investment of over £300 million in the January window took the total spending on players in their first season under new ownership to over half a billion.
Co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali were in attendance, but will not have been impressed as the Blues are still languishing in mid-table after the draw.
“New players are adapting to a new country and a new league. It’s not straightforward. When the price tag is what it is, questions will be asked, it’s the nature of the business,” said Potter.
“The decision we took in the window you can see the profile in terms of age. We feel we have a very strong group of players. We have to gel and become a really good team. That’s where the work is.
“We didn’t do enough in terms of our attacking play to create more, which is something we need to do. That bit of connection, that bit of fluidity, that bit of understanding that you need, we lacked a little bit.”
For all the enormous sums spent, Chelsea’s lack of a clinical goalscorer was exposed once more.
Kai Havertz had a hat-trick of big chances to break the deadlock before half-time.
First, the German failed to get enough contact on Thiago Silva’s brilliant pass to divert the ball beyond Bernd Leno.
Following that, he could not stretch to turn Mason Mount’s dangerous cross on target.
But his best opening came when he hit the post with a lob over Leno from Hakim Ziyech’s defence-splitting pass.
Ahead of the match, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was left out of Chelsea’s Champions League squad for the knockout stages but Potter insisted the Gabon striker still has a role to play at the club.
Aubameyang was absent from the 25-player list named on Friday and there was no place for £35 million January signing Benoit Badiashile, but Fernandez was included.
Mudryk and loan signing Joao Felix were also in the list.
“It was a tough decision,” said Potter.
“We had three coming in and two had to go out. He was the one that has missed out. It’s absolutely nothing bad against him.”
Hakim Ziyech would have been a Paris Saint-Germain player this week had Chelsea not submitted the wrong paperwork in the minutes before Tuesday’s transfer deadline.
While the Blues deal with their issues, Fulham – who had secured a first victory in the west London derby since 2006 when they won 2-1 at Craven Cottage in January – are flying high.
The Cottagers are a surprise package this season and are fighting for a European spot.
Fulham boss Marco Silva praised his team, saying: “From the first minute the players understood really well the plan and they executed really well.
“Our focus to be honest is on ourselves... and what we can do as a team. Our organisation was really good and we deserved the result.” AFP, REUTERS
