At the end of the first half, it felt like pantomime season. There were medics running in all directions, their every movement both mocked and cheered by the Etihad Stadium crowd. Chelsea had so many injured players that their second-string doctor-physio combination of Chris and Steve Hughes required a helping hand from their Manchester City counterparts.
This was a farce of Jose Mourinho’s making. Few things expose how utterly unreasonable some managers’ actions are quite like public ridicule.
When the second half began, attention switched from the treatment of Chelsea’s wounded warriors to the heart of their team. It had been detached.
John Terry, who played all 3420 minutes of the 2014/15 Premier League season, missed the second half of the second game. He was not injured – neither Chelsea's reserve medics nor the humbled Eva Carneiro need to spend their week treating Terry – and this felt a symbolic substitution.
Chelsea’s title-winning team was notable for the preponderance of totemic figures. Two weeks into the new campaign, they all look diminished.
Thibaut Courtois was suspended, Nemanja Matic looked a shadow of himself and Branislav Ivanovic has endured successive harrowing outings.
Cesc Fabregas and Eden Hazard were thoroughly outclassed by David Silva in a clash of the creators.
Diego Costa looked the pantomime villain, snarling haplessly as his dark schemes were thwarted.
Yet removing Terry was the most radical step of all. It seemed to epitomise the sudden sense that, out of nowhere, Chelsea are falling apart.
They have gone from resolute to ragged, ruthless to rather error riddled.
It felt both a tactical choice and gesture, both reasoned response to a one-sided first half and a spectacular gesture to indicate an era is ending.
Mourinho argued otherwise afterwards, complaining that he has restored Terry to pre-eminence while slipping in a sly dig at Rafa Benitez, who marginalised the club captain.
But how could it feel anything other than significant when Mourinho had selected Terry in the starting 11 for 176 previous Premier League games and never substituted him once? Or when his blueprint changed so dramatically for the second half?
Mourinho had devised a game plan to capitalise on Terry’s many strengths and camouflage his major weakness, a lack of pace. Then, amid the evisceration at the Etihad, he adopted a pressing game with a high defensive line and a 1980s-style offside trap.
No wonder he sent for Kurt Zouma who, as Mourinho repeated time and again, is much Chelsea’s quickest centre-back. Factor in his public pursuit of John Stones, another young defender with a turn of pace, and the notion of readying Terry’s long-term successors may have to be amended.
Perhaps Mourinho is trying to accelerate Chelsea’s journey into the future and Terry’s into the past.
Because, one by one, the cornerstones of his first Chelsea team have seen their status reduced.
Mourinho phased out Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole, he demoted Petr Cech and Didier Drogba’s lap of honour at Stamford Bridge came as Costa’s deputy.
Only Terry had the same status in 2005 and 2015 – he was the best centre-back in England both seasons.
Which is why it can seem an exaggeration to discuss decline when the new campaign is only two games old.
While Everton remain adamant they want to keep hold of Stones and while Gary Cahill is guilty of many a mistake, Terry has a strong case to retain his place.
Mourinho’s teams rarely push up to the halfway line, meaning recovery pace is a defender’s prime requirement, so it would be a surprise if Chelsea suddenly veered from one extreme, of sitting deep, to another.
But decline can come quickly and unexpectedly and, if there is not a particular drop off in Terry’s physical and footballing abilities, a Chelsea team that seemed set up to dominate for years now have to prove they have not peaked.
Moreover, there is a grandstanding element to Mourinho, who is yet to strengthen his starting 11 in a summer when others have bought, and he is not averse to playing politics. Chelsea do not look a happy camp and this was not just a substitution.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
