Injuries no excuse as Boro expose Chelsea’s reliance on Palmer

There must come a time when Chelsea are about more than Cole Palmer and injuries. Both issues were exposed in an unflattering light by Middlesbrough on Tuesday as Hayden Hackney gave the Championship side a 1-0 lead in their Carabao Cup semi-final clash, with the second leg taking place at Stamford Bridge in a fortnight.

Chelsea's best could still be enough to salvage the draw and book a place in February's final at Wembley, but angry scenes at full time suggest manager Mauricio Pochettino must start making the Blues more than the sum of their expensive parts assembled as soon as possible. .

Some Chelsea fans who turned out at the Riverside Stadium expressed their anger at the final whistle as several players acknowledged their support at the end of a display that may add to a growing catalog of mirror defeats: create chances, fail take them and concede a sweet goal.

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Sources have told ESPN that there is great sympathy within the club's hierarchy that injuries have prevented Pochettino from fielding his best team regularly. It's no exaggeration to say he may never have trained with his ideal lineup given the fitness issues that blighted their campaign.

But while Chelsea had 11 players unavailable here, Middlesbrough had 12 absent and lost two more to injury in the first 20 minutes as Emmanuel Latte Lath and Alex Bangura limped off.

Yet Michael Carrick's side had a game plan, stuck to it and reaped the rewards. Hackney's 37th-minute strike was one of only two shots on target Middlesbrough managed all evening, but they spent most of the second half operating with some comfort as Chelsea, once moreover, had difficulty breaking down a team defending in depth with organization and commitment.

“We made mistakes and we were punished for that, in football that happens,” Pochettino said. “We have to attack. If you evaluate the performance, then overall we were the better team, we created more chances and had clear chances. But we didn't score.

That happened this season and there were a lot of games we didn't win because we weren't clinical enough. We're missing goals, but we're not creating chances. We're creating ourselves lots of chances but let's not score them and if you don't, If I don't score it's hard to win.”

It usually falls to Palmer to make the difference. Chelsea went into this match with three straight wins, the second of which showcased Palmer's promise with two goals and an assist as the Blues edged past Luton. He could have finished with a similar result here, but that's why you shouldn't rely solely on 21-year-old players with limited experience at the top level to achieve your goals. Sometimes on the journey to their peak, they inevitably fail and Palmer did that here.

After being denied by Middlesbrough goalkeeper Tom Glover, Palmer had a golden chance to give Chelsea a lead in the 31st minute. Jonathan Howson played a square pass which Palmer reached out to intercept and suddenly he had the time and space to pick his spot from the edge of the box. He dragged his shot wide.

Hackney punished Chelsea at the other end before Palmer squandered an even better chance in first-half stoppage time, returning a rebound four yards after Glover failed to catch a tame shot from 'Enzo Fernández. There was still time before the break for another Palmer effort, this time of his own, but a weak shot failed to get past Glover.

Despite recording 81% possession in the second half, Chelsea managed just two more shots on target, making it five in 90 minutes, and Middlesbrough were left to celebrate a victory which gives them plenty of reason to adopt the same plan match in the west. London, against which the Blues have always hesitated.

It says a lot about the current state of Chelsea's project that they are so reliant on Palmer to save them, a player they only pivoted to late in the market after a deal to sign Michael Olise from Crystal Palace collapsed at the last minute.

Moisés Caicedo is undoubtedly a better player than he has shown in a Chelsea shirt so far, but his defense of the Middlesbrough goal was laughable. The most expensive player in British football history appeared more concerned with keeping his hands behind his back than scoring Hackney's goal as Isaiah Jones crossed from the left.

Such individual errors aggravate collective unhappiness and the resulting frustration explains the full-time hostile scenes. Thiago Silva appeared to act as a peacemaker as he tried to diffuse the anger of the visiting supporters.

“I didn’t see what happened,” Pochettino said. “I can't say anything about that. We can understand that our fans are disappointed but there are still 90 minutes to play.”

Chelsea simply have to be better than this. They could yet rise to reach a final at Wembley in Pochettino's first season and, from that position, a trophy would help silence doubts about his own future while galvanizing a young group assembled over three transfer windows in 18 months.

But Middlesbrough produced a cohesion through adversity that Chelsea can only dream of at present. It's up to Pochettino to change that.