Chelsea finds belief ahead of FA Cup final against Manchester City
On another anxious afternoon in a turbulent season, Chelsea walked into Anfield staring at an unwanted slice of history. Six straight Premier League defeats behind them, a seventh looming, and an FA Cup final with Manchester City on the horizon. Lose again, and they would become the first team in English league history to go into a Wembley showpiece on the back of seven consecutive losses.
Six minutes in, the script looked brutal.
Ryan Gravenberch bent a superb finish into the far corner and Anfield roared. Chelsea’s fragile confidence, battered by weeks of poor results and internal upheaval, seemed ready to cave in again.
It didn’t.
Instead, Calum McFarlane’s side dug in, found a foothold, and then something more valuable than a point: a structure, a performance and a belief that they might yet trouble City under the arch.
Enzo’s dead ball, Cucurella’s rallying cry
The equaliser came from a moment that looked harmless at first glance. Enzo Fernandez swung in a free-kick that drifted beyond everyone and nestled into the far corner. Fortunate? Perhaps. But it changed the mood entirely.
From that point, Chelsea stopped looking like a team bracing for the next punch and started to resemble one ready to throw a few of their own.
Marc Cucurella, pushed high as a wing-back, sensed it. He played with the aggression of a man who knows next week could define his season. Afterward, he cut straight to the core of what this display meant.
"I think the effort today was really good," he told TNT Sports. "I don't think it was probably our best moments, but we showed if we play together then we have a good level.
"We are happy that we showed we're a really good team if we put in the effort and fight together. Hopefully we can win a bit of confidence from this game because next week we have a massive game."
This was not about Chelsea at their most fluent. It was about Chelsea refusing to fold.
McFarlane stops the slide – and rips up the shape
The backdrop to this trip was bleak. Chelsea’s Champions League hopes had evaporated weeks ago. Liam Rosenior had gone amid murmurings that the dressing room had tuned him out. McFarlane’s first league game brought a 3-1 home defeat to a Nottingham Forest side fighting relegation. The mood was mutinous.
He had to stop the bleeding. At Anfield, he did.
McFarlane gambled on a back three for the first time in his interim spell, only the fourth time Chelsea have used it all season. Under Rosenior, the shape had failed against Premier League opposition and barely scraped past Wrexham in the FA Cup. Enzo Maresca never touched it in his 18 months in charge.
There was no compelling evidence this was the answer. Until now.
The change worked because of one returning figure at its heart.
Levi Colwill, starting for the first time in 10 months since the Fifa Club World Cup final, immediately looked like he had never been away. Calm on the ball, authoritative without it, he stitched Chelsea’s build-up together and gave them a base they have lacked for weeks.
"I thought Levi was the best player on the pitch," McFarlane said. "He gives you the ability to play out from the back, he's a leader and that was his first 90 minutes in a long time."
Colwill’s presence allowed Wesley Fofana, restored after being left out recently, to play with more assurance in a partnership he clearly enjoys. Jorrel Hato, one of the few Chelsea players to emerge with credit during their recent slump, completed a back three that suddenly looked composed rather than chaotic.
The knock-on effects rippled through the side.
Wing-backs, Palmer’s spark and a patched-up bench
With three centre-backs behind him, Cucurella attacked with far greater freedom. He repeatedly drove into the space behind Curtis Jones, a midfielder pressed into service as an emergency full-back. That mismatch became a reliable outlet.
Cole Palmer, wrestling with a 10-game goal drought in club football, finally looked lighter. His touch sharpened, his movement more purposeful. He even thought he had ended that barren run, only for a tight offside against Cucurella to wipe out his effort.
The system also solved a more basic problem: numbers. Chelsea went to Anfield without four senior wingers and had to name two academy forwards, 17-year-olds Mathis Eboue and Ryan Kavuma‑McQueen, on the bench. For a squad built to overwhelm opponents with attacking options, this was a stripped-back version.
The back three, with wing-backs providing width, gave McFarlane a way to mask those absences. It was pragmatic, not ideological – and it worked.
There was more encouragement from the bench. Captain Reece James returned for his first appearance in almost a month, a crucial step with City looming. The club are also hopeful that Alejandro Garnacho and Pedro Neto will be fit in time for the final, which would transform their attacking options.
A reminder of what Chelsea can be
It is easy to forget, given their Premier League struggles, that this group has already shown it can rise to the big occasion. Last summer they knocked off the champions of Spain, Italy, England and France on their way to Club World Cup glory against Paris St‑Germain. On their day, they can live with elite opposition in one-off games.
The league table tells a very different story. Chelsea are marooned outside the Champions League places, with fifth already beyond reach. They have gone 14 Premier League matches without a clean sheet – their longest such run since a 15-game sequence between March and May 1979 – and have just one win in their last 11 top-flight fixtures.
That is the reality McFarlane walked into. The 1-0 FA Cup semi-final win over Leeds at Wembley showed he could coax a performance under pressure. Anfield reinforced that point.
After the nadir of losing at home to a second-string Forest side, this felt like a team finally pushing back.
"We got the reaction we wanted and hopefully we can build on that," McFarlane said. "It was a good point and a good performance. It was a game that could have gone either way. We had moments to win it, which was disappointing in that respect, but it was a much‑improved performance and I'm pleased."
Blueprint for City – or just a brief respite?
This was not a statement win. It was a draw that left Chelsea’s league campaign still drifting. They remain porous, still searching for a clean sheet, still short of the ruthless edge that once defined them.
Yet within the 90 minutes at Anfield lay something more important than the result: a template.
Colwill anchoring a back three. Fofana and Hato alongside him. Cucurella high and aggressive. Palmer closer to his best. James edging back towards fitness. A team that, for the first time in weeks, looked like it believed in what it was doing.
Manchester City will test every inch of that belief. Pep Guardiola’s side will start as heavy favourites, and the level required at Wembley will be far higher than anything Chelsea have produced in the league of late.
But McFarlane now knows he has a structure that can stand up in hostile surroundings and under real pressure. He has proof that this group, written off and criticised, can still rally when the stakes rise.
For a season that has lurched from disappointment to disarray, that might just be enough to make City glance twice at the team waiting for them under the arch.
