When you’ve lost three games in a row any win is a good win. And there’s no such thing as a bad win by four goals. But equally, the context is unavoidable. This is a Southampton side who are doomed, who are letting in 2.41 goals per game, who have lost 14 of their past 17 league games and who have nothing to play for this season beyond trying to scrape together the three points that would take them above Derby’s record low of 11. The Premier League’s USP is supposed to be that anybody can beat anybody, but it’s hard to square that with this Southampton.

No win can be taken for granted, but equally there’s not a huge amount of credit to be gained in beating Southampton. Comfortable as this victory was, it was unlikely to do much to assuage the irritation of some fans.

Around 150 had demonstrated on Fulham Road against the ownership before kick-off, attacking Todd Boehly and Clearlake and demanding success. ‘We’re not Arsenal,’ blazed one hand-written poster, while others chanted the names of Roman Abramovich and José Mourinho. Yet results are only part of the issue.

Had they beaten Everton three days before Christmas, Chelsea would have gone top of the table. Since then, they had won just two of 10 games before Southampton came to Stamford Bridge. Whether it was fair or not, there was a sense that they had been elevated to a false position by a spell of unsustainably excellent form from Cole Palmer. The 22 year old didn’t have a bad game on Tuesday, but there were two first-half chances he would probably have converted in November that went begging.

This, though, felt far bigger than form. This is about the way football is going, the disconnect between fans and club, the sense that a club that was once integral to and representative of its community is now just an investment vehicle, the players assets to be traded as required.

It’s true that discontent would be less visible were Chelsea engaged in a battle for the title, but it doesn’t take many poor results to expose the sense of commercial soullessness just below the surface. The downturn over the past couple of months is in part down to problems of team building when so many players have come in and the underlying plan is difficult to discern. 

Injuries clearly are part of the issue. Wesley Fofana, Roméo Lavia and Nicolas Jackson represent the spine of the side, and losing them has created knock-on issues elsewhere. Jackson may not be as effective against low blocks as he is with space to run into, but he is a centre-forward. Without him and Marc Guiu, Chelsea don’t have a natural number nine, which at a time when they are also without the width offered by Noni Madueke with a thigh injury and Mykhailo Mudryk after his positive drugs test, that has forced a complete rethink of the forward line.

Pedro Neto, naturally a wide player, has had to be drafted in as a central forward, while Christopher Nkunku, a clever and inventive inside-forward in his goalscoring days at RB Leipzig, has been repurposed as a wide player on the left. There has been a certain amount of frustration – among fans at least – about his occasionally erratic movement, but he’s being asked to perform a role that does not come naturally to him and that, given how Marc Cucurella likes to invert, is essential.

It’s telling of the way the modern Chelsea are run that Nkunku, who was only signed in June 2023, feels like part of the club’s past. He officially joined a week before Mauricio Pochettino was appointed manager, scored three in five pre-season games and then was injured before the campaign began for real. Since then, Chelsea have signed 25 players; if Nkunku feels this is not quite the club he was sold, he can hardly be blamed.

Still, however uncomfortable he at times looks on the touchline, his goalscoring instincts remain sharp as he demonstrated after 24 minutes, stealing in front of Will Smallbone and braving contact with a flailing Aaron Ramsdale to nod in Tosin Adarabioyo’s header.

It was then with a more typical run infield that he set up the second, gathering Cucurella’s pass and slipping in Neto to hammer in a second. Not for the first time this season, Southampton had given their opponents a helping hand, James Bree squandering possession. Levi Colwill headed a third just before half-time.

Thereafter, it was just a case of playing out an extremely straightforward win, augmented by a breakaway goal from Cucurella.