Not for the first time this season, Chelsea dropped points this weekend after having a man sent off. They may stand no chance of catching Arsenal while getting this many red cards.
We’ve been here before.
Not for the first time in Chelsea’s recent history, there are issues with their discipline.
On Sunday, Enzo Maresca’s side secured a 1-1 draw with table-toppers Arsenal, which, even as recently as a few weeks ago, would have looked like a very good result.
But in those intervening weeks, Chelsea have clambered into the Premier League title race. They came into Matchday 13 in second place and as the in-form team against early pace-setters Arsenal. The gap between them was six points, but with Arsenal coming to Stamford Bridge without both first-choice centre-backs, William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães, for only the second time in 162 Premier League games, an opportunity was there.
Chelsea started like the team with more reason to believe they could win the game. They set out on the front foot. By the 38th minute, Arsenal had had three players booked (Chelsea one) and the hosts had had the better of the game, up 4-1 on shots and leading on xG too. Estêvão missed the best of the chances, skying his effort from a central position, 12 yards from goal. The home side were looking good to get a positive result.
But then came the moment on which the whole match turned. Moisés Caicedo lunged in recklessly on Mikel Merino and, after Anthony Taylor had dished out a yellow card, the Video Assistant Referee recommended an on-field review. After seeing the stills of Caicedo’s foot planted above Merino’s ankle, there was no chance of anything other than a red card for Chelsea’s most important player.
In fairness to Chelsea, they didn’t wilt. They battled hard and even went ahead through Trevoh Chalobah’s header early in the second half. Merino equalised shortly after, but Chelsea held out for a point and even managed to threaten the Arsenal goal occasionally despite being a man down.
Nonetheless, given how they’d started the game, it ended up feeling a lot like a chance missed. Not for the first time this season, Chelsea dropped points after having a man sent off, and the red card was crucial.
It was their fourth red in 13 Premier League games this season, meaning they are averaging one every 3.25 games (or 0.31 reds per game). It’s more often than any team has picked up red cards in any season in Premier League history, so if they continue at this rate, they will break the competition record for red cards in a season – currently nine (Sunderland, 2009-10 and QPR, 2011-12). Chelsea, at their current rate, are headed for 11.7 reds in 2025-26.
On top of Premier League games, there was the red card for now-departed Nicolas Jackson against Flamengo in their only defeat en route to Club World Cup glory. There was João Pedro’s dismissal late on after coming off the bench in the Champions League against Benfica. And, more recently, Liam Delap’s two bookings in the EFL Cup against Wolves, which Maresca described as “very stupid”.
“After the [first] yellow card, I told him four or five times, keep calm,” the Chelsea manager said after the game. “But Liam is a player inside the pitch, playing the game for himself, and he struggles to listen to things around him.
“It [Chelsea’s disciplinary record] is embarrassing when it is a red card like today. It is embarrassing [to get] two cards in seven minutes, both we can avoid.”
Perhaps, though, Maresca’s own behaviour is influencing his players. No manager has been shown more cards in Premier League games since the start of last season than him (eight – level with Brighton’s Fabian Hürzeler). And he has also been given yellow cards in the Champions League against Barcelona and Bayern Munich this season; no other manager has more in the competition.
Maresca clearly hasn’t done enough to curb a problem that predates his time at the club. During Mauricio Pochettino’s reign, his Chelsea side got more yellow cards per game than any manager at any club in Premier League history (20+ games).
There has been vast player turnover at Chelsea since that single season under Pochettino in 2023-24. Of the nine players who played the most Premier League minutes that season, only three remain at the club.
However, many of the main culprits when it comes to getting cards are still there. Caicedo (11), Marc Cucurella (10), Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernández and Malo Gusto (seven each) all picked up a large number of bookings that season. In total, Chelsea got more yellow cards (105) than any other team has in a Premier League season, and yet they only got four reds.
This season, cautions aren’t the issue. They are averaging a relatively normal 1.9 per game. It’s reds that are the problem.
Three of their four dismissals have been straight reds. And the only one that wasn’t came at 3-0 up away to Nottingham Forest, when Gusto picked up a completely avoidable late second booking. That was the only one of Chelsea’s four reds that didn’t have any real repercussions for the team.
The other three all came in the first hour of the game, and Chelsea dropped points every time.
At Manchester United in September, goalkeeper Robert Sánchez saw red inside five minutes, and Chelsea lost 2-1. At home to Brighton later that month, Chalobah was sent off after 53 minutes when Chelsea were winning 1-0. They went on to lose 3-1. Then, against Arsenal on Sunday, Caicedo was dismissed at 0-0 and Chelsea went on to draw the game.
In total, Chelsea have now dropped eight points in games where they’ve had a man sent off. It’s impossible to know whether they would have dropped as many – or any at all – if they had had 11 men on the pitch for 90 minutes, but they would obviously have had a better chance of doing so.
When Chelsea have not had a man sent off this season, they are averaging 2.2 points per game, compared to 1.3 when they go down to 10 men.
Meanwhile, table-toppers Arsenal (zero red cards this season) are averaging 2.3 points per game. If Chelsea had averaged 2.2 points per game overall this season, they’d be on 29 points, just one behind Arsenal, rather than facing a six-point gap as they currently do.
It’s simplistic to suggest that Chelsea would have just won all three of the games they slipped up in after having a man sent off. After all, they have drawn with both Crystal Palace and Brentford, and lost at home to Sunderland, all with 11 men on the pitch.
But there is no doubt they are giving themselves a tougher task than they need to too often. And against Arsenal, they genuinely looked like they could have won were it not for Caicedo’s wild lunge on Merino and deserved red card. Had they won and cut the gap to three points, Arsenal might have started to look over their shoulders.
The title race might now be beyond them. It might always have been for a young team – young both in age and that they haven’t been together as a group for very long at all. With that comes inconsistency.
But if Chelsea are to stand any chance of chasing down Arsenal, they need to stop shooting themselves in the foot, and that means they must slow down what would be a record-breaking rate of red cards.
Manage that, and who knows? Maybe Chelsea will make it into the title race.
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Could Ill-Discipline Cost Chelsea the Title? Opta Analyst.
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