Chelsea are on their worst run of form in 114 years and, four months into a 5½-year contract, the pressure is mounting on Liam Rosenior.
At the start, it had looked a match made in heaven -- in his first 15 matches, Rosenior's team lost just three times (all three coming at the hands of a then-high-flying Arsenal), as he won 10 and Chelsea played some free-flowing, goalscoring football.
Over the past couple of months, though, it's been a horror show: five Premier League games, five losses and no goals scored. Remarkably, the run -- extended by a 3-0 Champions League loss to Paris Saint-Germain -- was interrupted when Chelsea beat Port Vale 7-0 in the FA Cup fifth round.
The last time Chelsea went five league games without scoring was in 1912 -- the year the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic... Metaphor alert!
- The numbers behind Chelsea's winless run after Rosenior turns on players
Rosenior looks on during Chelsea's home defeat to Newcastle United. Ryan Pierse/Getty Images A game Chelsea lost to the kind of goal that makes FIFA players (EAFC, if you will) rage quit. A straight ball down the middle from Tino Livramento sent Joe Willock through on goal, one-on-one with Robert Sánchez, and the Newcastle man squared it to Anthony Gordon for a tap-in.
Around the goal, though, it had mostly been all Chelsea. They had 22 shots (even if only three were on target), dominated possession (67%) and were generally competent apart from that one defensive lapse.
Few could have predicted what was to happen to their finishing in the coming weeks.
Enzo Fernández appears dejected after the 3-0 loss to PSG that sealed an 8-2 defeat on aggregate. Getty Images Already trailing 5-2, Chelsea put up another half-decent performance (18 shots to eight, 1.26 xG to 1.09) only to see the sheer ruthlessness of the PSG frontline overwhelm them in the second leg of their round-of-16 tie. Any faint hopes of Chelsea recreating their stunning Club World Cup heroics were summarily dismissed early on when Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scored in the sixth minute and Bradley Barcola added another in the 14th and it was a steady slide the longer the game went on.
Individual errors from the Chelsea defence didn't help and Stamford Bridge started to empty with half an hour to go when Senny Mayulu made it 8-2 on aggregate.
That's how the score remained, as Chelsea slumped to their joint-heaviest Champions League loss on aggregate ever.