Chelsea have a big problem to solve at the heart of team

How one player is being missed even more than Cole Palmer

- LAWRENCE OSTLERE

There were moments watching Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday which brought to mind that joke about Leicester winning the Premier League with three players in midfield: Danny Drinkwater in the middle and N’Golo Kante either side.

There were times against Sunderland when Moises Caicedo filled the Kante role, essentially a one-man band without the ball as he attempted to break up attacks and snuff out passing lanes, running past teammates en route to the next fire.

Caicedo was notionally part of a midfield three with Enzo Fernandez and Joao Pedro, but his partners do not possess great defensive instincts and it showed in this 2-1 defeat, where Sunderland found it too easy to play through the centre of the pitch, and to defend it. Their late winner by Chemsdine Talbi was a gut-punch which emptied half the stadium onto Fulham Road, but it was well deserved.

Naturally, Chelsea missed Cole Palmer, still out with a groin injury. Yet his best games have typically come against more open opponents - think of the space he found breaking forwards in the Club World Cup final - and he would have been frustrated by static teammates here, trying to ignite Chelsea without the kinetic energy to make a spark.

So perhaps the player Chelsea really missed was Caicedo's best partner, Romeo Lavia. Kante was even more effective when he moved to Chelsea and played beside Nemanja Matic in Antonio Conte's title-winning side. They were ostensibly defensive players but their impact was offensive in the sense that they never let teams escape, never let counters develop, a security blanket that kept up waves of Chelsea pressure.