Jody Morris rates Chelsea's season under Thomas Tuchel and highlights 'worrying' sign

Former Chelsea assistant manager Jody Morris has slammed Chelsea’s ‘underwhelming’ campaign and believes there have been ‘worrying signs’ at the club all season.

Chelsea are on course to finish in the top four and are in the semi-finals of the FA Cup but have failed to close the gap on Manchester City and Liverpool at the summit of the Premier League.

The Blues sat in first place heading into December but their title hopes faded over the winter and are now sat 12 points adrift of leaders City in third with seven games of the season remaining.

Chelsea’s defence of their Champions League crown also came to an end this week, eliminated by Real Madrid at the quarter-final stage.

Morris left Stamford Bridge with Frank Lampard in January last year with Thomas Tuchel guiding the club to the Champions League during his first season in charge.

But with the club failing to build on that success, Morris believes the 2021-22 season will eventually be judged as a disappointment.

‘On a whole I’d say this season has been slightly underwhelming for Chelsea, especially considering how strong they finished last year,’ Morris said, speaking exclusively to Ladbrokes at the launch of their 5-A-Side bet on Chelsea v Crystal Palace.

‘If you look at them defensively when Thomas Tuchel took over, they looked so solid – and then to go on and achieve what they did by winning the Champions League; you’d have been right to have had high hopes for them at the start of this season with the signing of Romelu Lukaku.

‘You thought maybe that might have been the missing jigsaw piece that could have elevated them to the levels of Manchester City and Liverpool.

‘I wasn’t getting too carried away by the team at the beginning of the season, because I felt