LONDON -- What was the plan here, Frank? What was the question to which the answer was to "send a rusty Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang out on a hiding to nothing at his former home?"
Aubameyang is not part of Chelsea's short, medium or long-term plans. If you subscribe to ownership's claims that they had been mulling sacking Thomas Tuchel weeks before they did, Chelsea's No. 9 was nothing more than a prank at their former head coach's expense. Through little to no fault of his own -- neither Graham Potter nor Lampard have ever been anything less than complimentary of his training ground demeanor even as he has had humiliation upon embarrassment heaped on him -- he has become the totem for this most disastrous of seasons.
"You're going down," chanted the Emirates. Probably not but at the rate Chelsea are sinking it is best not to entirely rule out the possibility that one of this club's greatest-ever players could shepherd them to the Championship. Lose to Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth and it seems probable that Lampard's tenure will end up being pointless in more ways than one.
With a bloated squad, no realistic chance of silverware and routes into Europe next season drying up swiftly, it seemed that there was no way that Lampard could damage his standing as a prospective Premier League manager for next season and beyond. And yet like one of those driven shots through a crowded penalty area that he specialized in, he found a way. He is not the first to be burned by the garbage fire that is Chelsea 2022-23, he may well find that this favor for Todd Boehly is like a burn mark on his CV.
The best hope is that this is the nadir for both parties. Certainly, the interim head coach gave the impression of a man baffled to see his club brought this low, who has little option but to at least pick the players who are trying. Indeed he seemed to suggest that some of those he has been picking lacked the basic fitness to compete with this opponent. "If you haven't been conditioning on Wednesday and Thursday, you won't be doing it on Saturday," Lampard said. "When they become you as a group, they don't change overnight. We're seeing that at the moment.
"I'm absolutely not questioning the players as lads but from being good lads to transferring onto the pitch, you need to be aggressive through the week to be [an] aggressive player when you go on the pitch. That has to be something you do. As a collective group, we're not that. There can be a lot of reasons, some excuses, and some [reasons] are very valid by the way, players coming into the Premier League into a team having a difficult moment, it's not easy. This is the hardest league in the world."
Chelsea are certainly making it look like that. Had they not had Tuchel for the first six games, from which they claimed 10 points, where might they be?
You could tell the story of Chelsea's rapid decline quite effectively through their last four meetings with Arsenal, five if you count the preseason friendly in Orlando last year where Tuchel concluded something profound was amiss. The last time the Blues visited the Emirates Stadium they bullied Arsenal, their supreme game control allied to the authority of Romelu Lukaku. Two defeats at Stamford Bridge found Chelsea mired in crises of their owner's making, the sanctions on Roman Abramovich, the spending of Boehly. As this disastrous season reaches its conclusion, the visitors were lucky to only lose 3-1.
The opening passage set the timbre of this game. Jakub Kiwior, who improved swiftly from a slow start, handed possession to Chelsea with a heavy touch. Enzo Fernandez did nothing positive with the ball, thumping an ambitious shot straight at an Arsenal defender, and in seconds Bukayo Saka was flying up the pitch. The hosts were not so flawless that there was not a chance for a better opponent to get something from this game but at the other end Chelsea simply had no answers for Arsenal.
Granit Xhaka saw Martin Odegaard in a canyon of space outside the penalty area. No one in a blue shirt did until it was too late, the Arsenal captain bending the ball in off the crossbar, his 21st goal contribution of the Premier League season. He is now in the sort of rarefied air occupied by Robert Pires in his best. His 22nd soon followed, one fewer than Invincibles vintage Pires, another Xhaka cross to his unmarked captain. There are facets of Chelsea's play for which the blame lies firmly at Lampard's door. The bafflement of Chelsea's technical staff said it all, these were basic errors of the sort no coach needs to remind players not to make.
Still, Chelsea concluded with a flourish of faultiness: Wesley Fofana, Cesar Azpilicueta, Thiago Silva and Kepa Arrizabalaga collapsed on the deck as Gabriel Jesus lobbed the ball into the net. By half time Aubameyang had registered nine touches. Four of them were kickoffs. One of them was in the Arsenal half, knocking the ball straight into touch to the derision of the Emirates. It was no wonder opportunities passed him by when Raheem Sterling was playing through balls into blank spaces. Then again these two were starting a game for the first time since the last time they lost to Arsenal, way back before the World Cup. It is no great wonder they were on such varying wavelengths.
He would not make it beyond the interval. Did Kai Havertz spark greater life from Chelsea in the second half? Not particularly, it was more a case that when Saka and Gabriel Magalhaes saw chances pass them by Arsenal's intensity cooled, to the frustration of their manager.
"After 60 minutes, we should have scored four or five," said Mikel Arteta. "We didn't do that and then after conceding the goal, with a long period to play, we should have managed the game a little better."
Noni Madueke's clipped finish off Mateo Kovacic's lofted pass was not even a consolation, there was no cavalry charge to come from a team who had just doubled their goal tally in six games under their current manager. Lampard pointed to a "more dynamic nature." It's a low bar indeed, two shots between the start of the second half and the 90th minute. Then again, that is what Chelsea have set for themselves this season. At least anything bordering on the adequate next year will constitute progress.
