Chelsea are a model of dysfunction – has Frank Lampard accepted a hospital pass?

In the final minutes of regulation at Molineux, even with substantial added time guaranteed to come on top of the 90, the Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters still felt secure enough in their team's ability to see out a 1-0 lead against a listless Chelsea to indulge in a little fun at the visitors' expense.

“You're getting sacked in the morning!,” they chanted gleefully in the direction of Frank Lampard as he stood stony-faced on the edge of his technical area, watching his second debut as Chelsea manager.

The humour in their (admittedly not the most imaginative) attempt at banter was rooted in the obvious absurdity of Lampard being dismissed one match into this interim return to the club he graced as a player, becoming their record goalscorer, and the job he held for 18 months from the summer of 2019. Yet such is the extent of the dysfunction new owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali have wrought, no absurdity feels truly beyond Chelsea at this stage of a disastrous season.

Wolves away was their third match in the space of the week preceding the club's most important test of the season — home and away (away first) against holders Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-finals. Lampard was their third head coach of that week, and the first tangible confirmation anyone outside the club received of his support staff was the sight of the familiar faces of Ashley Cole, Joe Edwards and Chris Jones leading warm-up drills on the pitch on Saturday.

Lampard looks on from the Chelsea bench with his coaches, Joe Edwards and Chris Jones, at his side. Ashley Cole was also in attendance at Molineux (Photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)

The absences of Bruno Saltor, Bjorn Hamberg and any of Graham Potter's other key lieutenants bar goalkeeping coach Ben Roberts went similarly unacknowledged by the club's official channels. Lampard could not even address the situation in his post-match press conference, suggesting the men who led the preparations for Tuesday's goalless draw with Liverpool at Stamford Bridge are now in the same realm of contractual purgatory as their colleague Anthony Barry.

Chelsea could face Madrid in the Bernabeu on Wednesday with more first-team coaches on gardening leave than in the dugout.

Lampard has returned to the club who sacked him in January 2021 with an idea of football that is distinct from Potter's, and indeed that of the man who was his successor back then, Thomas Tuchel.

That meant Chelsea lined up against Wolves in a 4-3-3 for the first time since early February, with Reece James (No 24) encouraged to push forward on the right, Enzo Fernandez (No 5) operating in the traditional Jorginho role, Conor Gallagher (No 23) deployed as a very attack-minded No 8, Joao Felix (No 11) drifting inside from the left wing and Kai Havertz (No 29) tasked with leading the line as a focal-point No 9.

Chelsea's average positions at Molineux

This expansive set-up yielded surprisingly little goal threat in a first half that seemed to be drifting towards the interval until Matheus Nunes produced a Marco van Basten-esque volley from a half-cleared cross to smash Wolves in front.

The goal came from almost nothing but the danger did not; Julen Lopetegui's plan to attack Chelsea from the flanks — and, in particular, to exploit the space around the overmatched Marc Cucurella — was clear from the outset and yielded steady results, primarily in the form of a succession of corners.

Cucurella received minimal defensive protection from Joao Felix who, along with Raheem Sterling (No 17), was often painfully poor at retaining the ball under physical pressure. In between them, Havertz spent much of the afternoon being bullied or crowded out by Wolves' imposing centre-backs.

Lopetegui's strategy when Wolves were without possession worked higher up the pitch too; many of Kepa Arrizabalaga's hurried kicks were the result of Chelsea struggling to progress the ball out of their defensive third under pressure with Kalidou Koulibaly, Wesley Fofana and Fernandez.

In their own defensive third, Wolves were content to funnel Chelsea wide, backing themselves to ensure that Havertz could not connect with any high crosses. Lampard's team were at their most dangerous when instead finding low cutbacks: Havertz and returning substitute Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang both had near-post efforts blocked and Gallagher horribly miscued another shot from the edge of the box.

All in all, home goalkeeper Jose Sa had one save to make.

Wolves' modest xG number of 0.55 marks this out as one of Chelsea's better defensive performances in recent weeks, but there were several sequences not ending in shot attempts that appeared ominous with a team of Real Madrid's ruthlessness on the horizon. On one occasion just before the hour mark Matheus Cunha ran through the middle third completely unchallenged to generate a two-v-one with Nunes against Fofana, only for bad execution to snuff out the chance.

Coaches with far grander resumes than Lampard would find it difficult to implement a brand new tactical system — as well as figure out the players best suited to it — in just two training sessions before their first game. He will have only a couple more before travelling to Spain to take on a team who are everything the Chelsea of 2022-23 are not: calm, clinical and crystal clear in their identity, with an unshakeable belief in their ability to find solutions no matter the circumstances.

Chelsea outplayed Madrid for three out of four halves of Champions League knockout football last season and still ended up losing a thrilling quarter-final. That was with a near-perfect Tuchel game plan that maximised the personnel at his disposal, executed with only a handful of mistakes across the two games. Despite last night's surprise home loss to Villarreal, Madrid do not usually need many opportunities for their seasoned world-class individuals to make the difference — as Barcelona found last Wednesday at the Camp Nou.

It could be argued that Lampard might have been better served to take the pragmatic approach and lean into the wing-back system this group of players appear more comfortable in. But presumably Boehly and Eghbali knew this was his plan before they brought him back to lead a ludicrously bloated squad that is half familiar, half unrecognisable from his first spell in charge.

Conor Gallagher competes in the air with Wolves' match-winner, Matheus Nunes, as Chelsea slump to another scoreless defeat (Photo: Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)

Champions League knockout football retains an almost unparalleled capacity for drama, and Lampard knows first-hand that unlikely shifts in momentum can be harnessed on that stage to vanquish even the most fearsome of opponents.

The winners of their quarter-final with Madrid will play Manchester City or Bayern Munich in the semis. So to go all the way this season, their only route to Champions League qualification for next season now they are 17 points off fourth with eight games left, Chelsea will most likely need to edge out Europe's two outstanding teams — just as they did with him in their midfield in 2012.

But that team had exceptional leaders, an established identity and a guiding sense of destiny. As was so often the case in the Roman Abramovich era, there were layers of continuity beneath the trademark chaos. Chelsea in 2023 are a football club in flux at almost every level, epitomised by the coaching carousel that has spun with disorienting speed on the eve of the most important away trip of the season.

A fit N'Golo Kante patrolling the midfield at Bernabeu does not feel like anywhere near enough to compensate.

Lampard could not turn down the chance to return to Chelsea for many reasons, but this opportunity carries the whiff of a hospital pass.

Finding a way to defeat Madrid in the current circumstances would rank very high on the club's list of Champions League miracles.