Chelsea bow out of Champions League against Real Madrid: 2023-24 season starts now for Todd Boehly and company

Another 2-0 defeat means there is nothing but pride for Chelsea to play for over the coming weeks

LONDON -- It has been on the horizon for months now, but at long last Chelsea are free from the suffocating pressure of stakes. It is mid-April, there are seven games left in the Premier League and nothing more to play for than avoiding the ignominy of finishing outside the top half. The 2022-23 season can be hermetically sealed, placed in a time capsule and hurled to the bottom of the Mariana trench.

Last season, Thomas Tuchel's side played as many games as any top club in Europe, reaching two domestic finals, rarely playing a game that did not carry some profound weight. One might make the case that the only matches of profound individual performance to be played on Stamford Bridge soil so far in 2023 have been the second leg Champions League round of 16 against Borussia Dortmund last month and this second 2-0 loss to Real Madrid in six days. That is a damning sign of how far Chelsea have fallen. Still, their rapid decline brings with it an opportunity to begin anew.

A club with an iota of joined-up thinking -- and the jury is out as to whether Chelsea are such a team -- would probably appreciate that scrambling up the Premier League has rather more utility for Frank Lampard's standing in the game than it does for the staff who will succeed him. A team that has spent 2022-23 in permanent turmoil now has nearly 20 percent of a league season to find out something about who they really are and who they might be when the points totals are reset to zero.