'Awful' - National media says the same thing about Chelsea after Leicester FA Cup drama

Predicting Chelsea from minute to minute remains a fruitless exercise. The club's continued defiance to taking control, seeing out matches, riding through tough periods, playing for calmness, or doing the expected is certainly entertaining, if not massively frustrating.

Against Championship leaders — at the time — Leicester,they showed the full range of brilliance worthy of competing for a top-four place in the Premier League as well as levels of chaotic destruction that an Under-11 side would shudder at the thought of. Are you not entertained?

For the first 45 minutes, in which they ended up leading 2-0 but had already started to turn sour after a series of increasingly jarring Raheem Sterling misses, there was relative ease within the ground. Chelsea were comfortable if not spectacular, looking able to score or at least get the ball into the opposition box at will. On the other hand they were extremely open in transition and have only poor end product to thank for not being punished.

The familiar sense of second-half blues kicked in when Axel Disasi somehow managed to usurp Robert Sanchez's misplaced pass earlier in the campaign to Declan Rice for the biggest defensive blunder. His halfway line own goal would have made most laugh even in the circumstances if it hadn't meant almost inevitable self-destruction to follow.

Then came the Leicester siege and the equaliser. Chelsea's opening — a red card for Callum Doyle — came courtesy of a simple punt downfield that really shouldn't be splitting open teams at any level. Sterling boos and yet more chants aimed at Mauricio Pochettino came and went before three moments of quality that the preceding 20 minutes really didn't deserve.

Cole Palmer did the Cole Palmer thing, Carney