Gary Neville’s bizarre Chelsea title critique highlights Thomas Tuchel’s Mohamed Salah truth

There is an inconvenient reality when judging Chelsea's failure to keep pace with Manchester City in the Premier League.

Apart from the traditional winter collapses felt under Antonio Conte, Maurizio Sarri and Frank Lampard, 2021/22 has been hindered by devastating injuries to vital players, a flurry of COVID cases that surged through the squad around Christmas and on top of that, an unrelenting schedule.

This has made a full-on autopsy harder to accomplish, which leads us to a place where they are no easy answers or simple conclusions. In the binary world of social media, this is not appreciated. It is much easier to boil issues down to a soundbite or a scapegoat to pin all our irritation.

The reality is that Chelsea was flying in November, having just beaten Juventus 4-0 under the lights at Stamford Bridge. Tuchel's squad only seemed to be improving with time.

The famed automatisms that see players work off instinct and muscle memory were there. Chelsea players were almost walking on water.

Everything was coming easily to them, as demonstrated by the third goal against Juventus, which saw five players involved in an incredible move that resulted in Callum Hudson-Odoi rifling home an empathic third goal.

Then Ben Chilwell landed awkwardly, and arguably the trajectory of Chelsea's season swung in another direction.

Both Chilwell and Reece James, who would go on to get injured at the end of December, were vital creators in Tuchel's team.

Compared to a title rival, it was as significant as Liverpool losing Mohamed Salah for the rest of this season. Or like last season, where they endured a defensive injury crisis as Virgil van Dijk missed the majority of the year with a cruciate ligament rupture.

Chilwell and James were