As Graham Potter rightly said in the press conference after the match against the villains“the intention of the team was there, the attack was there, but the score is painful for us, so there isn’t much I can say that seems positive”. It is difficult to analyze with optimism a defeat by 0-2at home and against your main opponent on the table. Chelsea’s game wasn’t bad, since they generated enough chances to have seen the net -27 shots, eight of them on target-, but it wasn’t good either, since the defeat against Aston Villa leaves the Blues as 11th classified, almost as many points from the Champions League places (11) as from relegation (13).
However, the most optimistic will see in the return of N’Golo Kanté a nail, practically the only one, in which to hold on after a new setback in the Chelsea season. Many things have changed since the last time the French midfielder put on the elastic Blue to play an official match. Among them, the coach. The 33 minutes that the French international played against Unai Emery’s team were, in addition to his first minutes after more than seven months out due to injury, the first under Graham Potter’s orders. His third game so far in the 2022/2023 season.
To be exact, seven months and 17 days have elapsed since the injury suffered by N’Golo Kanté against Tottenham back in August. This had to be substituted five minutes from the end of the match and he would not play again in 2022. During this time, Thomas Tuchel would be dismissed, the English coach would take charge of the team and N’Golo Kanté would miss the World Cup in Qatar 2022. His return to the playing fields was getting closer, but Graham Potter himself wanted to go on lead feet. “We must manage it as the next stage for us, because (N’Golo Kanté) has been out for a long time,” he said at the pre-match press conference.
After warming up on the Stamford Bridge wing against Everton, the last game before the national team break, the Frenchman played his first minutes in a friendly prior to the resumption of club football. His time had come. Although his comeback was not the dream, since the 0-2 against Aston Villa, the work of John McGinn, came when N’Golo Kanté was preparing on the wing to jump onto the pitch, the fans Blues they received him with a warm ovation. Already on the pitch of the London Coliseum, including the captain’s armband, the French midfielder showed why he will be a fundamental player from now until the end of the season.
With Mateo Kovacic as a pivot, N’Golo Kanté played inside, along with Enzo Fernández, in the last half hour of the game. He ran, fought and pressed, but above all he generated in attack. The Chelsea midfielder touched, on more than one occasion, the goal that he made the fans dream of Blues with the machada, but his shots went wide or blocked. Without being a typical attacking midfielder, N’Golo Kanté proved to be one of Graham Potter’s missing pieces.