Chelsea's Fightback at Anfield: From Crisis to Performance
Chelsea finally remembered how to fight.
Staring at a slice of unwanted history, a goal down inside six minutes at Anfield and with an FA Cup final looming, this could easily have turned into another grim chapter in a bleak Premier League run. Instead, Calum McFarlane walked away with a point, a plan and, crucially, a performance his players and supporters could actually believe in.
From crisis to contest
Ryan Gravenberch’s early curler threatened to drag Chelsea into ignominy. Lose here and they would be one defeat away from becoming the first team in English league history to suffer seven straight losses heading into a Wembley showpiece. Confidence was already fragile. The mood around the club, darker still.
The weeks leading up to this had been brutal. The Champions League chase had fizzled out. Liam Rosenior had gone, amid whispers that his message no longer landed in the dressing room. Nottingham Forest, fighting for their lives, had walked into Stamford Bridge and won 3-1 against an anaemic, uncertain Chelsea in McFarlane’s first game as interim.
This trip to Anfield was supposed to be damage limitation. It ended up offering something far more valuable.
Enzo Fernández’s free-kick, drifting untouched into the far corner, changed the temperature of the night. It was scruffy, a little fortunate, but Chelsea were in no position to complain. They needed a foothold. They got it.
From there, the contest hardened. Chelsea stopped looking like a team waiting to be beaten and started resembling one that had collectively decided enough was enough.
McFarlane’s gamble pays off
McFarlane did not just ask for a reaction. He changed the structure of the side to force one.
For the first time in his interim spell, and only the fourth time all season, Chelsea lined up with a back three. Under Rosenior, that system had looked like an awkward costume, worn twice in defeat to Premier League opposition and only just good enough to edge past Wrexham in the FA Cup. Enzo Maresca had ignored it altogether during his 18 months in charge.
Here, the shape suddenly made sense.
The key was Levi Colwill. Making his first start in 10 months, since the Fifa Club World Cup final, the 23-year-old slotted into the defence and immediately calmed Chelsea’s build-up. He took the ball, demanded it again, and gave his side a platform that had been missing for weeks.
McFarlane did not hide his admiration afterwards. Colwill, he said, had been the best player on the pitch. The evidence backed him up: composed on the ball, authoritative without it, and a vocal presence in a team that has often looked short of leaders.
Alongside him, Wesley Fofana – previously left out by McFarlane – returned to the XI, renewing a partnership Colwill clearly enjoys. Jorrel Hato, one of the few Chelsea players to emerge with any credit from their recent slump, came back into the side as well. Between the three of them, they gave Chelsea something they have sorely lacked: defensive stability that did not come at the expense of ambition.
The numbers still tell an ugly story. Chelsea are now 14 league games without a clean sheet, their longest such run since a 15-match stretch in 1979, and they have only one win in their last 11 Premier League outings. Yet this back three, with Colwill at its heart, at least looked like a base from which to build.
Cucurella unleashed, Palmer stirred
The change of system did more than steady the defence. It liberated Marc Cucurella.
Pushed higher as an attacking wing-back, the Spaniard spent the night driving into space down Liverpool’s right, repeatedly targeting makeshift full-back Curtis Jones. His energy and aggression embodied the edge Chelsea have been missing.
“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.”
Cucurella has lived through the worst of this season. His words carried weight. “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.”
That “massive game” is Manchester City at Wembley. For the first time in weeks, Chelsea look like they have something resembling a tactical blueprint for it.
Cole Palmer, struggling badly for form and without a club goal in 10 matches, flickered back into life. His movement was sharper, his touch cleaner, and he thought he had finally ended his drought, only for an effort to be ruled out by a marginal offside against Cucurella. It was still a step in the right direction for a player Chelsea need firing if they are to trouble City.
Given the injury list, McFarlane needed these tweaks to work. With four senior wingers unavailable, he had to name 17-year-old academy forwards Mathis Eboue and Ryan Kavuma-McQueen on the bench. The back-three system helped mask those absences, giving width from deep and freeing central players to operate between the lines.
Glimpses of Wembley
There were other, quieter boosts. Reece James made his first appearance in almost a month, coming off the bench to get valuable minutes into his legs. Chelsea expect Alejandro Garnacho and Pedro Neto to return in time for the final as well, potentially transforming their attacking options against a City side that will dominate the ball and punish any looseness.
This is where Chelsea’s season has been so puzzling. Last summer, they beat the champions of Spain, Italy, England and France on the way to Club World Cup glory against Paris St‑Germain. They showed, quite clearly, that in a one-off game they can live with elite opposition.
Yet domestically, they have fallen well short of expectations set by their own hierarchy. Champions League qualification was the minimum. Fifth place is now out of reach. The Premier League table offers no comfort.
What McFarlane has shown, though, is that he can set up a team to handle pressure. The 1-0 win over Leeds in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley was tight, nervy and decisive. This draw at Anfield, carved out from a position of early jeopardy, carried a similar resilience.
After the Forest defeat, McFarlane sounded determined to change the mood. Here, he saw signs that his message was landing.
“We got the reaction we wanted and hopefully we can build on that,” he 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.”
He had every right to be. The away end agreed, staying behind to applaud the players off. That has not been a common sight this season.
The Premier League campaign may be beyond repair, the numbers unforgiving and the questions around the club’s direction still loud. But for one night at Anfield, Chelsea found structure, spirit and a hint of themselves again.
On Saturday at Wembley, against Guardiola’s City, we will find out if that was a flicker of resistance – or the start of something that can carry a troubled season to an unlikely piece of silverware.
