The Guardian's article title rewrite: The Champions League Reveals How Money Can Have a Negative Impact on Teams, As Seen With Boehly's Chelsea Lacking Passion or Reason.

Real Madrid simply had to be better than a Chelsea team resembling a sinking ship filled with castaways.

The end of the season has arrived. Maybe even the summer budget. Who knows, maybe even the entire Chelsea 3.0 Blue Sky Project Stage One?

With 28 minutes remaining in their Champions League second leg, Chelsea always seemed to be losing, even when they appeared to be threatening to win. The home bench took a deep breath, cleared its throat, and unleashed £260m worth of haphazard attacking talent onto the pitch.

While Chelsea were already 3-0 down in the tie when Raheem Sterling, João Félix, and Mykhaylo Mudryk came on, the team spent an hour playing with five defenders and three defensive midfielders, one of which was installed as a dedicated No. 10 and right-winger. This thrillingly overmanned attacking machine had only managed to score one goal in their last 510 minutes of football. Yet, it was time to go with Boehly-ball. Disrupt. Subvert the dominant paradigm. Storm the dressing room. Do anything to keep away the gathering quiet horror around this baffling, viciously wasteful football-style project.

This was a peculiar football match. There is something sad and grotesque about watching this Chelsea team struggling through their patterns, contorted shapes, and blocked talent. Nothing seems permanent, stitched together, or crafted with any skill and love. It feels like "The Hollow Men." We are the stuffed men. We are the human spoils of Todd Boehly’s incoherent acquisitiveness, the top-down confusion as to how this complex and heavily ritualised sport actually works.

Despite all of this, Chelsea played well. Stamford Bridge was boisterously full, with the white midweek lights conjuring the muscle memory of more coherent times where teams looked like teams and had some guiding intelligence behind them. There were key missed chances before Madrid took the lead, with the ball frequently falling to N’Golo Kanté close to goal, which is unsurprising when you choose him to play in such a role.

Frank Lampard selected a team to snipe and harry and chase, with Conor Gallagher and Kanté tasked as dogs of counter-pressing. And it worked for a bit. Chelsea did snap and chase, forcing some hurried clearances and producing 45 minutes of angry, chastened, slightly vague attacking pressure. Things happened but didn’t happen. Chelsea almost made chances, and Reece James had a fantastic game after the chase in Madrid. Chelsea has numerous problems, but James is not one of them. Before halftime, Marc Cucurella allowed Thibaut Courtois to produce a world-class save, waiting just a little too long in front of goal.

It still felt like a little bit of desperate measures, an attempt to throw a shape over something shapeless. By the end, Chelsea had launched 28 crosses into the Madrid box, which really is a lot of crosses. Is this the right way to play? Maybe. Who knows? What does Todd think?

Madrid simply had to be good enough here. They took the lead through Rodrygo, set up by a delightful pass from Vinícius Júnior. Rodrygo then walked the second goal into the net to make it 4-0 on aggregate. Kepa Arrizabalaga launched a wild, swinging leg as he lingered on the line. It felt a little insolent. But can anyone blame Madrid? This wasn't so much men against boys as it was a highly competent team against a hallucinogenic fever dream of how to play soccer, winched into place by a coterie of hyped-up management consultants.

Something a little grotesque has been created here, a real-time reminder of what people want to do to this sport, of the distorting effects of money without sense, love, or care. Even Chelsea's half-time warm-up was an excruciating spectacle as their star substitutes bumbled about in their padded coats, bantering with Antonio Rüdiger, vaguely swaggering and conveying a sense of total alienation. There may have been more contemptuously disinterested knee-lunges than those Hakim Ziyech performed on the Stamford Bridge pitch, but not many, and none that come to mind.

Chelsea's season has reached an endpoint. Perhaps the promise of a Europa Conference League place might fire the synapses. More likely, this entity is heading for more public contortions. The air is humming a little, and pretty soon, no one around here will have much to lose.

What happens to this club from here? There is no way to recoup the absurd amounts of money spent. Income will now decrease. What can be done to recover those investment funds? Capsize the Premier League and start a money-harvesting super league? Or cut your losses and move on to hydrogen batteries, olive oil, or lithium mining?

Right now this place is starting to resemble a footballing version of the Raft of the Medusa, a sinking vessel peopled by castaways, hanging on not out of love or duty but self preservation. Who is really looking out for this thing anyway, the delicate, patchwork entity that is Chelsea FC. The club’s third manager in the last eight months is basically a sole trader, expert, if nothing else in self-preservation. The players have their own brands and auras and future worth to protect.

The season may be dead on its feet, a lesson in nothing more than how to turn human talent into cold product. But there is still a sense of unresolved energy about this toxic escapade. The next few weeks might just make for interesting viewing.