Charly Musonda Jr vs. Crystal Palace: After controversial week, outshines starters in 25-minute cameo

Charly Musonda Jr managed to create a bit of a stir in an otherwise sleepy international break by going on a full-blooded rant on his Instagram account, essentially hitting out at (probably) Chelsea over frustrations regarding his playing time and overall development plan. While Musonda apparently has claimed that he wasn’t specifically aiming that at Chelsea but possibly Belgium instead, the follow-up comments from his older brother made it pretty clear that Chelsea were at least part of the target package for the youngster’s social media salvo. Musonda eventually deleted the comments, was “reprimanded” by Chelsea, and had a clear-the-air chat with Conte.

Then, when it came time to the actual game yesterday, Musonda even got an extended cameo to try to inject some life into an otherwise lethargic Chelsea attack. If we squint just right and grade on a curve, taking into account just how terrible most of the other Chelsea players were, Charly Jr actually did alright. He showed good strength (which seems to be the biggest worry about him), good movement, and good drive and impetus to try to make something happen. The chance he missed was a bit unfortunate and maybe he overdid it with the dribbling at times, but perhaps even more so than his start against Nottingham Forest, this performance, coming against proper Premier League opposition, is something we can build on.

Chelsea have now scored just 1 goal in our last 3 league games. A breath of fresh air is needed, either tactically or personnel-wise. Musonda may not be the answer, but he’s certainly worth a try, no?

P.S.: I spent the last few hours getting CM 01-02 running on my MacBook, complete with the latest Tapani/Saturn patch, which updates the database to April 2017 and puts you at the start of last season. Not two weeks into the game, here’s the message I got from the assistant.