London Chelsea in this transfer window, it has already spent well over 200 million euros on reinforcements. This is another time when this club is spending horrendous money, although not as radically as in previous years, when in order to build a strong squad, “The Blues” spent almost 500 million (!) euros. It did not bring satisfactory results, because the “renovated” team took only sixth place in the league, and coach Mauricio Pochettino said goodbye to his job.
Chelsea have spent over 700 million in two years. What effect will this have?
This time, the London team approaches the season under the guidance of Enzo Maresca, the former Leicester City manager who led the club to a comeback Premier League after a one-year spell in the Championship. Chelsea began the season with a 2-0 home defeat to Manchester City. A bit disappointing for sure, but then again it's Manchester City, no shame.
The Blues got a chance to redeem themselves against the Swiss Servette in the fourth round of the Conference League qualifiers. This is the third team of the previous season in Switzerland. These valuations are not entirely reliable, they must be taken into account, but nevertheless it is quite telling that there are 21 players in the Chelsea squad valued higher on transfermarkt.de than the entire Servette squad put together (24.18 million euros). This was more or less the disproportion of power on paper.
Servette defended itself for a long time. On the other hand, Marc Guiu cannot be defended.
However, paper is one thing, reality is another. Chelsea were unable to break the Swiss team's defensive resistance for a long time. Even the attempts were poor, because after the first half it was Servette who had significantly more shots on target (4:1). It was only in the second half that the Londoners got penalty kickprobably converted into a goal by Christopher Nkunku. But what happened two minutes later is impossible to explain.
Marc Guiu's excellent pressing of the opposing goalkeeper Jeremy Frick caused him to make a mistake and hit the young Spaniard with the ball. As a result, the Barcelona graduate found himself with the ball a few meters from an empty goal. Did he score a goal? No way! He shot so crookedly and clumsily that he hit the desperately returning goalkeeper, who managed to defend two follow-up shots from the Chelsea striker.
Robert Lewandowski's former teammate and rival from Barcelona was lucky that his team was already leading and then won. The Swiss were finished off in the 76th minute by Noni Madueke, using a pass from Enzo Fernandez. Chelsea triumphed 2-0, but the poor impression of the first half and, above all, Marc Guiu's nightmare will not be forgotten and Servette does not have to be doomed to drop out in the face of the return match in Lancy (a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland).