Chelsea season review: Sackings, disobedience and ‘huddlegate’ define a woeful 2025-26

Remember how optimistic everyone felt about Chelsea going into 2025-26?

Many in the game felt the club were making significant strides towards becoming a top team again. Yet here we are in late May, and the club’s supporters will be pleased the campaign is over, so they can start forgetting about it as soon as possible.

Well, before dragging your painful memories to the same trash can you shoved 2022-23 in, here is one last look back with The Athletic’s annual season review.

Chelsea’s grade for 2025-26 is… E

What a disappointment it has been. There is some mitigation. It was Enzo Maresca’s decision to leave in January, and that had a huge impact on the second half of the season, but the club chose Liam Rosenior to replace him as head coach, and that backfired badly.

Calum McFarlane, who was employed last summer to be the club’s under-21s coach, has had two spells as interim first-team boss. That says it all.

Over £100million of the summer budget was spent on Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Alejandro Garnacho, and they all failed to make an impression.

Qualifying for the Champions League via a top-five finish was seen as the bare minimum. Their hopes basically ended with a run of six straight league defeats between March and May. Only a spectacular late Joao Pedro strike against Nottingham Forest saved them from losing all six without finding the net, for the first time in club history.

Chelsea finished bottom of the Premier League fair play table for the second time in three seasons, accumulating a ridiculous eight red cards, double the number of next-worst Tottenham (the total was 11 across all competitions).

Key players Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella spoke out against the hierarchy, while a section of fans organised protests. A seventh successive domestic final defeat in the FA Cup against Manchester City, plus finishing among the also-rans in the top division, was a fitting way to end it.

Goal of the season

Stamford Bridge was at its loudest when Estevao’s individual effort against Barcelona in November hit the back of the net.

All the talk pre-match had been about the visitors’ own teenage attacking talent, Lamine Yamal. However, Estevao’s name was the one on everyone’s lips after he waltzed past a bewildered Barca defence to put Chelsea two goals up (they went on to win 3-0).

Pau Cubarsi looked like a London tourist trying to figure out which way to go to find Big Ben as Estevao danced past, and Alejandro Balde did not do much better as he came across to cover. The Brazilian still had a lot to do, but he sent a fierce shot in with his right foot off the underside of the bar.

Game of the season

This could easily be Barcelona too, but the scenes at the end of the 2-1 home win against champions Liverpool in October take you back to when even Maresca looked like he still cared about the job.

Chelsea won that match with a starting centre-back pairing of Benoit Badiashile and Josh Acheampong and finished it with Reece James and Jorrel Hato in the middle of their back line.

Estevao’s stoppage-time winner was so well received the crowd even sang along to Stamford Bridge’s controversial ‘goal music’.

Maresca ran down the touchline, Jose Mourinho-style, to celebrate with his players, and was clearly not thinking of leaving them mid-season at this point. However, the Italian did disappear before the final whistle as he was shown a second yellow card of the game and sent off.

Enzo Maresca is sent off after joining in Chelsea’s celebrations for Estevao’s late winner against Liverpool (Robin Jones/Getty Images)

Surprise of the season

Malo Gusto scoring his first Chelsea goal, against Wolves in November.

Such was my confidence in the full-back’s ability to find the net, I had begun putting a long read together to pay homage to his lack of finishing skills, as a light-hearted way to honour his 100th appearance for the club. So you can imagine my delight when he headed in from close range in his 98th.

In the end, some of the prep for that piece did not go to waste.

Mistake of the season

So many to choose from, but it has to be hiring Rosenior to replace Maresca. A job this big came too soon for the 41-year-old, and he lasted just 107 days. Though that was enough time to cause major damage to dressing-room dynamics and the club’s chances of qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

His tenure ended with a run of five league defeats without scoring a goal, which sadly illustrated just how much the players had stopped playing for him.

Quote of the season

“Since I joined the club, the last 48 hours have been the worst because many people didn’t support us.”

Chelsea had just beaten Everton 2-0 on December 13 to end a streak of four games without a win. Cole Palmer actually played like Cole Palmer that day, so everyone in the press room was expecting a happy Maresca to walk in the door to wax lyrical about it all. Instead, he reacted to a tame question about Gusto’s performance by dropping this bombshell and leaving journalists looking at each other open-mouthed.

Everyone knew in that instant that it was the beginning of the end for Maresca, and he left just three weeks later.

Maresca’s press-conference bombshell in December signalled the beginning of the end of his time as Chelsea head coach (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

Funniest moment of the season

Referee Paul Tierney getting stuck in the middle of Chelsea’s pre-match huddle over the centre spot at home against Newcastle in March.

The ritual had been going on for weeks and had already put Chelsea under a lot of negative scrutiny, but Tierney’s actions that day made it more of a farce.

To make matters worse, Rosenior gave everyone else another excuse to chuckle at Chelsea’s expense in his post-match press conference by saying the players were doing it to “respect the ball”.

Referee Paul Tierney finds himself trapped inside a Chelsea huddle (Sky Sports)

Opposition player of the season

It has to go to a Paris Saint-Germain player. The European champions inflicted Chelsea’s joint-heaviest margin of defeat in the Champions League knockout phase when they won 8-2 on aggregate in the round of 16.

There were so many outstanding performers across the two games but Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the one who took the tie away from Chelsea. He scored the final two goals of the first leg late on in Paris to make it 5-2, then ended any hope of a dramatic comeback at Stamford Bridge by opening the scoring in the sixth minute.

The issue that will dominate this summer is…

Transfers, both in and out.

Incoming manager Xabi Alonso wants to build a team of ‘mentality monsters’, a phrase that cannot be applied to many individuals in the current group. Separating the wheat from the chaff is the biggest task facing everybody.

This time next year, we’ll all be saying…

“No European football this season was a blessing in disguise for Chelsea.”