Chelsea finally secured a 5-0 FA Cup win at home to League Two Morecambe on Saturday.
It was a victory that deserved not three victims, but two, maybe one, as the Premier League giants made their lowly visitors suffer before a three-goal burst in seven second-half minutes distorted the scoreline.
In a display that secured Chelsea’s place in the fourth round of the FA Cup, not many of the club’s B teams stated a strong case for promotion to the Premier League XI.
How the game developed
Chelsea started Saturday’s game with the confidence of a team sitting 87 league places above their opponents. The fourth-tier strugglers were stuck in their own half for much of the opening 15 minutes before they caved late on under mounting pressure.
Morecambe skipper Yann Songo’o took the unorthodox approach to blocking Joao Felixthe cross to instinctively raise both arms, locking them in a vertical position as if preparing to dive into an invisible pool. Christopher Nkunku, however, did not punish the captain’s failure.
The French forward curled a low effort inside Harry Burgoyne’s wing, watching the Shrimps keeper preserve parity.
The Stamford Bridge side ended the first half with a broken neck, their gaze constantly fixed on the Morecambe half of the pitch. But Derek Adams’ side fought bravely, wearing a red shirt in front of the ball as Chelsea unleashed a flurry of shots. Unfortunately for the spirited visitors, Callum Jones had no intention of getting in the way of Tosin Adarabioyo’s speculative effort, inadvertently deflecting the centre-back’s pot shot past his keeper in the 40th minute.
Nkunku made up for his missed kick five minutes after the restart. Jones underlined the quality of Chelsea’s opponents with a touch inside his box so heavy it might as well have been a pass from Renato Veiga. The Portuguese midfielder had his firm effort denied by Burgoyne before Nkunku blasted home the rebound.
After more than an hour stuck against the ropes, Morecambe finally crumbled to the canvas for the final 20 minutes. Tosin added his second of the game, Chelsea’s third, with an even sweeter strike from distance that didn’t require the misdirection of a deflection to fool Burgoyne.
Joao Felix soon found his range, rolling in a pair of ends less than two minutes apart to make it 5-0.
Morecambe had the chance to give their boisterous traveling support something to shout about apart from their hated owners. In a rare 88th-minute strike, the aptly-named Hallam Hope was responsible for the visitors’ last chance, but tamely slotted the ball into the welcoming gloves of Filip Jorgensen.
Check out Chelsea vs Morecambe player ratings here.
That, as much as he doesn’t want it to be, is the level of Christopher Nkunku these days. the first Bundesliga The top goalscorer and £52m recruit has been the reluctant talisman of Chelsea’s B team. Of the 13 starts he has made this season, only three have been in the Premier League.
Nkunku has made the most of these cup outings; the quiet finish he delivered on Saturday was his 11th goal in the Europa Conference League, Carabao Cup and FA Cup. However, the Frenchman couldn’t even crack a smile.
Maybe his penalty miss in the first half was still weighing on his mind, or maybe he was scoring more. Rumors have increased this month claiming that Nkunku is in desperate search of one away from Stamford Bridge to gain some minutes against clubs he sat a little higher on the professional pyramid than in 91. Barcelona has been presented as a potential destination, but insists Maresca who wants his striker to stay unhappy.
Whether Nkunku can hold out for another six months among the students remains to be seen.
No VAR in the FA Cup third round means this penalty was not replayed 😶#BBCFACup #BBCFutbol pic.twitter.com/4lhv4H6JM7
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) January 11, 2025
As Chelsea found out on Saturday after Morecambe’s Harry Burgoyne scampered off his line to save Nkunku’s penalty, there was no VAR in use during FA Cup third round. The controversial video system has many flaws, but it would surely have caught the goalkeeper’s illegal error, allowing Nkunku to resume his offside shot.
At the end of Chelsea’s comfortable win, this was little more than a pernicious wrinkle, but teams won’t always be so lucky.
The world’s oldest cup competition has always struggled to decipher how best to implement technological advances. The FA Cup was a decade old before permanent bars were introduced, let alone pitch monitors. The logic behind the seemingly arbitrary decision to introduce VAR from the fifth round is hard to find.
Football fans can’t agree on much, but the vague concept of “consistency” seems to be a value held above all others. In that case, how can there be a uniform standard of refereeing in a competition where the rules change from match to match?
On a day where Tyrique George showed promising footwork Рespecially after the introduction of a lower back to take some of the defensive focus out Рand Joao F̩lix scored a brace, Marc Guiu failed to score.
The former Barcelona forward, with a forceful approach that has earned him six goals in his five previous appearances, finished the game with 11 touches. Even that paltry tally, the fewest number of fielders to last the full 90 minutes, seemed too high for the impact it provided.
Hidden in a mass of Morecambe red shirts sunk into a block so low it sometimes veered towards the Shed End, Guiu spent large parts of Saturday’s contest completely disconnected from the rest of his team-mates.
At a time when Nicolas Jackson’s dip in form may offer a route into the first team, Guiu did little to suggest he deserves a starting place in England’s top flight.
