"The Collapse at Arsenal Illustrates the Uselessness of Chelsea's Celebrity-Driven Product"

The zombified spectacle that is Chelsea Football Club limped onto the pitch at Emirates Stadium, while Arsenal seemed to defy the odds with a 3-1 win. With their title hopes still alive, Arsenal played with energy and structure, displaying the potential for a team that will thrive beyond this season. Mikel Arteta’s side attacked Chelsea from the outset, with Martin Ødegaard’s opening 20 minutes leaving Chelsea’s defence helpless.

However, while there was joy for Arsenal fans, the match revealed an object of deep fascination– Chelsea’s own complex and eerie sense of sporting entropy. The club has lost six games in a row under Frank Lampard, a head coach with more Ls than Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, and despite having spent more than any other club in Europe, Chelsea are now level on points with a team that lost its manager at the start of the season.

For all their weakness, what's most fascinating about Chelsea’s bad form is the way they play. It’s sport without play, joy or energy, an unheimlich spectacle, undead and creepy. It's like football played in an invite-only Super League, where the team is more like a deathly, pointless celebrity product.

Chelsea’s starting XI was something of an oddity, comprising of strange disruptions and unique players that the ownership seemed to admire. Arsenal took full advantage of Chelsea’s uncertainty, opening the scoring through Granit Xhaka, before Ødegaard scored twice. Gabriel Jesus scored the third, with Chelsea struggling to even muster a fightback.

In summary, Chelsea's slow, eerie demise can be likened to a horror story where we are uncertain whether the team is dead or alive. This is greed-ridden sport played incoherently, an anti-sport, un-football that could herald the death of this beautiful game.

Chelsea did play with a little more energy in the second half. Noni Madueke scored his first goal for the club. And so that funeral procession marches on. If Chelsea lose at the weekend they will find themselves below Bournemouth and possibly Wolves. There is an argument that there has never been a team this badly built, a team that so clearly points the way towards a loss of anything that looks like actual sport. For this much, English football should probably be grateful.