Chelsea take up Madrid challenge hoping for Champions League miracle

T hey would have to call it The Miracle of Frank Lampard. It would be the barely plausible tale of the man who was guiding Everton into the Championship landing a new job three months later and, in defiance of all logic, being summoned to rescue the club he knows best before masterminding a series of staggering upsets and ending the campaign as the interim head coach who led Chelsea to the most unlikely of Champions League triumphs.

It would be the latest example of football’s ability to surprise and bewilder. It would be romance over reality, an invocation of the spirit of 2012, the kind of content ripe to be packaged into a 10-part Netflix documentary. Cue Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali looking into the camera and explaining this was the plan all along: buy the club, fire Thomas Tuchel and talk of the long term after hiring Graham Potter; then build a squad of more than 30 players after spending almost £600m, fire Potter after seven months, put one of his assistants in charge for a game, tumble into the bottom half of the Premier League and end the campaign with a manager who was only available after being sacked by Everton in January.

Unfortunately that is the reality for Chelsea before they step out at the Bernabéu and face Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday. In truth, there is no grand vision. Last week, as Chelsea scrambled to find a successor for Potter, there was talk of panic. An exhaustive managerial search is under way, but what of the club’s finances? They are highly unlikely to qualify for Europe through the league and, with concerns over Financial Fair Play growing after the latest accounts revealed losses of £121m, people within the game believe Chelsea will