Blues overcame Wrexham in extra time, but key players rested for a much stronger showing against PSG.
PSG is gearing up to face Chelsea in the Champions League. The Blues battled through a tough match against Wrexham but emerged victorious after extra time. With key players rested, they’re ready to shine.
Traveling to the highly publicized Wrexham AFC pitch this Saturday afternoon, the Blues did not necessarily prepare very well for their Champions League round of 16 against PSG, delivering a generally mediocre performance in every aspect except the final result: a 4-2 victory. They had to go through extra time while the opponent, fighting for promotion to the Premier League, played with ten men for over half an hour.
With a heavily reshuffled team, but notably the presence of Robert Sanchez in goal, the Blues were trailing twice on the scoreboard, and logically so, but managed to come back to level the score twice, with overall very poor play and quite a bit of luck. It was eleven against ten in extra time that they made the difference, through Garnacho, who had already provoked the first equalizer, but they nearly were caught several times before Joao Pedro, their key man at the moment, scored the decisive goal in the 125th minute.
Chelsea qualified for the quarterfinals and, above all, rotated their squad extensively on this occasion since only two or three of the starters from this Wrexham/PSG match will start against Paris: Romeo Lavia or, more probably, Andrey Santos in midfield, Pedro Neto or Garnacho in attack, or even Mamadou Sarr in central defense. Hato played again, but not as left back, but Cucurella was able to play a little under an hour by coming on and he could therefore reclaim his starting place at left back.
Most of Chelsea's key players did not play a minute: Chalobah and Reece James remained on the bench the entire match, Wesley Fofana, Moises Caicedo, Cole Palmer, or even Enzo Fernandez had not even made the trip. Malo Gusto and Joao Pedro came on for the last minutes of the match, plus extra time, about half a period in total, counting stoppage time.
Now on to PSG, with a very different team and an expected level of play that should be far superior to what was shown this Saturday.
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