Ipswich 2 Chelsea 0: Below-par Blues shocked by Prem new boys as second straight loss dents title hopes
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AFTER months of relentless positivity, Chelsea are back into ‘billionaire bottle jobs’ territory. That was the wounding barb spat out by Gary Neville last season to describe Mauricio Pochettino’s under-achieving Blues. Enzo Maresca seemed to have consigned all of that to the trash - whatever day the binmen might be coming this week.
![[Liam Delap helped fire Ipswich to their first home win in the Premier League since 2002]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ipswich-towns-liam-delap-celebrates-960633296_2b1ca2.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
But here, Chelsea’s lavishly-assembled team were made to look foolish by an Ipswich side who hadn’t won at home all season. Maresca was right about one thing - Chelsea were never in a title race. After taking just one point out of nine over the festive period, they are now ten points adrift of Liverpool having played a game more.
![[Chelsea are now winless in their last three games]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/chelseas-italian-head-coach-enzo-960640401.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
The Scousers will be crowing before Easter at this rate. But Maresca has been wrong about everything else of late, including his team selection here - as he dropped Nicolas Jackson and Jadon Sancho, among five changes, and saw his side defeated for a second successive match.
![[Delap fired Ipswich in front from the penalty spot]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/19-liam-delap-shoots-penalty-960632506.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Maresca was involved in a Championship title race with Ipswich while in charge of Leicester last season and so he should have known that lightweight options like Joao Felix and Christopher Nkunku might be vulnerable to a bullying here. So it proved. Chelsea’s owners were also made to look daft by the identity of Ipswich’s second goalscorer, Omari Hutchinson, one of the promising homegrown youngsters they flogged for what they call ‘pure profit’ under Profit and Sustainability Rules.
![[Omari Hutchinson scored the second with a tidy finish]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-ipswich-towns-omari-hutchinson-960639210.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
