LONDON — As month 13 of their never-ending season approaches, Chelsea are getting all the breaks except the one they most need. For the second home game in a row, pernickety interventions from VAR proved to be decisive for the world champions. Without them, how different this start to the season might be for a side who really look like they need a summer break.
In their 2-0 win over Fulham, Chelsea played just as you would expect a team to when they have barely had time off between the end of 2024-25 and the start of 2025-26. Their high line was punctured with alarming regularity by Josh King and challenges that they might have dominated this time a year ago saw them bounce off white shirts. Too much of their possession play seemed to reflect the worst qualities of Enzo Maresca’s system: meandering for the sake of it, never looking like turning ball retention inside the Fulham half into pressure on the opposition penalty area. They played like a team needing a hand from forces outside their control.
Perhaps that was to be expected. After all they were without Cole Palmer and not playing an opponent as chaotic as West Ham. After a scrappy but bright start, Liam Delap fell to a hamstring injury, the latest returnee from the Club World Cup whose season looks like being disrupted. Maresca is already sounding the alarm over the status of his squad, noting in his pre match press conference that “our three players with the most minutes last year” — Palmer, Levi Colwill and Moises Caicedo — were already battling injury issues of their own. Colwill will be out for much of the remainder of the season and Caicedo is already requiring careful management, his first training session after the West Ham win coming on Friday.
It should have been a matter of great relief for Chelsea that Caicedo was fit enough to start. His brilliant block denied Timothy Castagne the opener and no one on either side matched his 11 ball recoveries. If he had not been sweeping up danger with his customary excellence, this game could have gone in a very different direction.
Not that Caicedo was this game’s most influential figure. Vying for that honor would be referee Robert Jones and the VAvarR pairing of Michael Salisbury and Scott Ledger. Yes I’m afraid we’re going to have to do officiating talk. Grit your teeth, let’s get through it.
With 21 minutes played, Fulham thought they had the lead their play deserved. It was an elegant bit of counterattacking, Rodrigo Muniz dropping deep and dragging Trevoh Chalobah with him. He spun and fed the run of King, who showed exceptional composure for an 18-year-old in shifting his weight and positioning to take Tosin Adarabioyo out of the game and drive a shot through the defender’s legs. There was only one question that hung over the goal: had King gone beyond the defense too soon?
VAR quickly concluded that that was not an issue but what was this? Chalobah had stayed down after the goal and replays showed that in his pirouette into a passing position, Muniz had trod on the Chelsea defender. Jones was sent over to his monitor and after a string of replays at full speed and in slow motion, he concluded that this was a “careless challenge.” That is not an entirely incorrect interpretation of the incident but the outcry that greeted it — on BBC Radio former Premier League boss Chris Wilder labelled it “one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen from VAR” — spoke to the sense that this is not the sort of clear error that video officiating is supposed to address.
Whether the careless player might have been Chalobah, sticking his leg in Muniz’s landing spot, is up for debate, just as Marc Guehi’s shoving at an Eberechi Eze free kick was 13 days ago. The vagaries of VAR have favored Chelsea so far this season and that is not ideal for Maresca, whose side might be three points worse off if those watching on from afar had had a different view of events. In such circumstances he was hardly inclined to question Jones’ decisions but he did acknowledge that he would have been miffed if he were in Silva’s position.
Silva himself was stunned. An hour after the final whistle he was stood by his dugout, trying to cool himself down rather than say something in his press conference that might keep him from the dugout next time out. After staring Jones down at half time, Silva had opted to keep his counsel at the final whistle. It wouldn’t help to lose his cool. He had to explain to King why the moment he had dreamed of since joining Fulham as an eight year old had been swept from him.
“He’s going home not understanding why the goal was disallowed,” said Silva. “I told him be ready because unfortunately it’s going to happen many times that you’re going to not understand football in the future. If you are in a Fulham shirt probably you’re going to not understand many things as well. A great moment from him. It should not be disallowed. Definitely.”
Carving through this mountain of evidence for the first goal needed time and that needed to be reflected in the time added on: eight minutes of it to close the first half. It was just Fulham’s luck today that Joao Pedro rose highest to head home a corner in the ninth minute of stoppage time. Marco Silva scowled. “I saw all the eight minutes,” he said after. “The game didn’t stop one time.” It seemed to take his every fibre to keep 10 yards from Jones as his players trooped into the dressing room. They could scarcely have believed that things were about to get worse.
And yet there was more damage to be done by the little monitor in the West Stand. The handball rule, with its varying interpretations across domestic leagues and UEFA, seems to have been defined by Justice Potter Stewart. You’ll know it when you see it. And most knew Ryan Sessegnon had handled a Trevoh Chalobah cross when they saw it. But what of the ball brushing against Joao Pedro’s arm in the build up? Or Caicedo’s stamp on Alex Iwobi?
“It’s handball from Sess but before that you can find easily two or three fouls for ourselves,” said Silva. “Our players went to the screen, they should not but they did, and they were laughing. Stamp on Iwobi, handball from Pedro, pushing and blocking and nothing comes from the VAR.”
This really doesn’t feel like an optimal experience for anyone in Stamford Bridge or tuning in around the world, let alone on the pitch, watching someone else watch every single blade of grass in pursuit of the slightest infraction that will dictate the course of a game.
That is what happened today. Before this game devolved into 40,000 watching Jones watching replays, Fulham had been the better team, one primed to punish a tiring Chelsea side. When Enzo Fernandez converted the penalty, there was no fight from the visitors on derby day. They could not rouse themselves for a late push.
“Outstanding first half from ourself,” Silva said of his side’s performance. “We dominated the whole half, we were clearly the best team on the pitch. Brave on the ball, very difficult for Chelsea to press, the way we knew they were going to come. We found the spare player and from that moment we built good moments in our offensive organization. It was a very good first half that didn’t end in the way we wanted.”
No wonder Silva kept labelling his experience “unbelievable”. His side had not been beaten by their opponent but by how officials had interpreted key incidents. That may be valid in instances of clear referee error but in a low scoring sport a difference of opinion on a debatable incident can change the course of a game. VAR was never supposed to be about re-refereeing matches from 13 miles away.
As such the nature of the game was radically changed. Today might have brought questions about how Chelsea will keep players fresh through September, let alone the course of a season. Instead we’re going to be cast into yet more debate about the rights and wrongs of video intervention.
