'Everything points to another night to forget for Chelsea'

It’s a strange position for Chelsea to be in before tonight’s Champions League quarter final first leg against Real Madrid. Yes, they’ve been underdogs against the Spanish giants before - this is the third year in a row they’ve met in this competition. But to be coming into the game with zero expectation off the back of a miserable Premier League campaign which sees them languishing in 11th in the table, 17 points off the pace of the top four - it’s hard to think of a time when Chelsea’s hopes of progression have been so universally dismissed.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference at the Bernabeu yesterday, interim manager Frank Lampard said this competition could offer "some escapism" for the Blues players after a campaign in which pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. The latest week of chaos - which saw three different managers across three games pick up just one point - was another chastening turn in an already tumultuous season.

Adding insult to injury will be the presence of Antonio Rudiger in Real’s backline. He has been sorely missed in both the dressing room and on the pitch - his character and leadership provided a huge lift and injection of passion which we haven’t seen enough of from the players left behind following his departure.

While the reception of Thibaut Courtois will be typically frosty from the travelling Blues fans who still hold resentment for the way he departed the club, I think there’s a huge amount of respect for Rudiger and what he did in his five seasons in SW6. In hindsight, the circumstances around his transfer acts as almost a metaphor for the end of that chapter of the clubs’ history following its sale last summer.

Everything points to another night to forget for Chelsea Football Club in the 2022-23 season - but could the spine-tingling strains of the iconic Champions League anthem inspire the team to pull off the unthinkable and upset the 14-time winners of this competition? If they can recapture some of the magic which catapulted them to the title just two years ago - it promises to surely be an evening which will go down in history for the club.