Chelsea Faces Liverpool Amidst Season Crisis
At Anfield today, the story starts long before kick-off and far from the Kop.
Chelsea still stung by Ngumoha loss
Inside Cobham, they are still seething about Rio Ngumoha.
The 17-year-old, now a Liverpool winger, walked away from Chelsea last summer in a move that cut deep through the club’s academy. Behind closed doors, senior figures have vowed not to let it happen again – not with talents they rate in the same bracket.
Ryan Kavuma‑McQueen, on Chelsea’s bench at Anfield, is one of those. His presence is no accident. Since Ngumoha’s departure, Chelsea have pushed hard to convince their brightest youngsters that their future lies in blue, not elsewhere. The message is blunt: no more Rio Ngumohas.
Liverpool, those involved say, won that battle because they could offer something simple and powerful – a clearer pathway. For a player widely viewed as Chelsea’s standout in his age group, that was decisive. The scars from that decision are still visible every time he pulls on a red shirt.
Flags back on the Kop
Walk out into the Anfield daylight and a different kind of statement fills the eye.
The Kop is once again awash with flags and banners. For weeks, they were gone – a silent, pointed protest by fan groups against ticket price rises. The colour drained from the stand, and with it a piece of Anfield’s identity.
That changed when Liverpool scaled back their planned increases for the next couple of seasons. The response is on show now: red, white, yellow, slogans and crests fluttering in the wind. A visual truce, but not a forgetful one.
“We are here and are not giving up”
Chelsea arrive in a mess. Six straight league defeats. Ninth in the table. Confidence shot.
Malo Gusto does not dodge it. Speaking to TNT Sports, he calls it “a tough period” and admits “the last few games were complicated in terms of results”. The right-back leans on defiance instead of excuses.
“We are here and are not giving up,” he says. “We still compete for what we want to achieve and today is a good opportunity.
“It’s important to show the fans and the club and the people that we are Chelsea, we have to win games and still compete for what we want. Today is a great opportunity for that.”
It sounds like a rallying cry. The table tells another story.
Van Dijk sets the terms
Across the tunnel, Virgil van Dijk knows exactly what this game represents for Liverpool.
“Tough one,” he tells TNT Sports. “They obviously are not having a great season like us. We know what’s at stake today, we know this is a massive opportunity for us in order to get close to or get the job done in terms of Champions League football for next season.”
Liverpool need only four more points to guarantee a return to Europe’s elite. Van Dijk calls that “the least that we as a club owe to our fans to get it done”. Three games left. No room for self-pity.
“There are three more games that we want to win, we want to play good football,” he adds when asked about next season. Win now, reset later. That is the plan.
His programme notes are even more stark. Van Dijk labels the campaign “very disappointing” and “unacceptable”, and insists Liverpool “cannot feel sorry” for themselves. For a club used to chasing titles, the tone is unforgiving. Deliberately so.
A trophy-less Liverpool, limping on
The numbers behind that frustration are brutal.
Liverpool have already lost 18 times in all competitions. They went out of both the Champions League and FA Cup in the quarter-finals, never got beyond the fourth round of the Carabao Cup, and were beaten in the Community Shield back in August.
For a club that has been lifting trophies since the days when Sir David Attenborough – who turned 100 on Friday – was in nappies, this season will end empty-handed. No silverware. No parade.
They start today 18 points behind leaders Arsenal, a yawning gap for the defending Premier League champions. Arne Slot has admitted that even three straight wins with sparkling performances might not quieten all the criticism. He knows the mood. He hears it.
Liverpool are staggering towards the finish line, chasing the minimum requirement of Champions League qualification while fans debate how much needs ripping up in the summer.
Salah’s quiet farewell
On the touchline, Mohamed Salah offers a softer image.
He stands near the dugout, fruit salad in hand, watching the warm-up. He pauses often to sign autographs, pose for photos, wave. As his team-mates jog off, he makes a point of greeting them one by one.
After today, Liverpool have only one more home game left this season. Salah hopes to be fit for that, to say a proper goodbye to Anfield if this is to be the end of his time here. For now, he watches, waits, and soaks it all in.
Chelsea on the brink
If Liverpool’s season feels underwhelming, Chelsea’s borders on catastrophic.
Six consecutive league defeats have dumped them into ninth and shredded belief. Lose again and they will match a seven-game losing run only once seen before in their history. Not since 74 years ago have they endured a sequence this grim.
At the start of this slump, Chelsea were talked about as contenders for Champions League places. Now they stare at the very real possibility of missing out on Europe altogether.
The maths are unforgiving. Aston Villa, currently fifth, can open up a Champions League place for the team in sixth if they beat Freiburg in the Europa League final. To even sniff that opportunity, Chelsea must close a four-point gap to Bournemouth with only three matches left. It is a chase they have given themselves little right to win.
On the pitch, the problems are everywhere. Cole Palmer, so often their talisman, “looks a shadow of the player we know he is,” as one pundit puts it. Defensively, they are porous. Chris Sutton’s prediction is blunt: Liverpool 2-1 Chelsea, and that feels almost generous.
Anger growing in west London
Off the pitch, the mood is turning darker.
Protests are planned at Chelsea’s next two fixtures. The first will come at the FA Cup final next Saturday, the second on Tuesday at their last home game of the season against relegation-threatened rivals Tottenham.
Fan anger in west London is no longer a murmur. It is organised and loud, aimed squarely at ownership and direction, as a once-feared club drifts towards mediocrity.
“No fight” and no excuses
Liverpool’s supporters are hardly content either.
On the club’s own fan channels, the verdicts are scathing. One message captures the mood: “There’s no fight in the team, they’ve got lazy and sloppy. There are so many passes going astray in every game, so many mistakes in defence, so many chances missed and we’ve got the worst midfield we’ve had in years. We need a massive clearance throughout the club, not just the players, the recruitment team and management need to go too before we end up mid-table nobodies.”
It is harsh, but it speaks to a fanbase that has tasted the very top and now sees a side falling well short of that standard.
For Van Dijk, that is exactly why this game cannot slip. Against a Chelsea team that “can’t buy a win at the moment”, as one reporter notes, anything less than three points would deepen the sense of decay.
Two giants, one season to forget, collide at Anfield. Liverpool chase respectability and a ticket back to the Champions League. Chelsea fight to stop a crisis turning into an era.
Something has to give.
