Chelsea 1-3 Real Madrid, Champions League: Post-match reaction, ratings

Well, the good news is that there are no away goals in this year’s competition. And we can beat this team. Just have to play not terrible.

Chelsea started well, with plenty of energy and impetus, but then a bit of defending reminiscent of last weekend gave Karim Benzema a free header to open the scoring.

Then, just a couple minutes later, Karim Benzema did a Karim Benzema, and suddenly we were two behind with barely 25 minutes on the clock, and suddenly things were looking a lot worse.

Chelsea, to our credit, got back into the game, and got one back on the scoreboard, too, with Kai Havertz finding the back of the net before the half.

But the second half began in calamitous circumstances, as we gifted Benzema his hat-trick. Chelsea tried to get one back at least before the end of the 90 minutes, but to no avail. We had a few chances, a couple quite good even, but lacked the requisite finish.

So Real take a two-goal advantage into next week’s second leg.

Carefree.

• Azpilicueta deputizes at left wing-back, otherwise an expected 3-4-3 from Tuchel. Back-four after half, with Azpi at left back.
• Double-change at half, then another double-change just past the hour-mark. Not much doing with either.
• Back-to-back losses in all competitions since the end of September
• Next up: Southampton away on Saturday
• KTBFFH

PLAYER RATINGS: