The Athletic. Hello, I'm Dan Bardell.

And I'm Flo Lloyd Hughes.

And welcome to the Athletic Football podcast.

It's Wednesday.

And as always, we're joined by one of our writers at The Athletic to focus on some of the great work they've been doing on the site.

And today we're joined by the Athletics Chelsea correspondent, Liam Toomey, who has written a number of articles recently about a club at Crossroads as they wait for their new owners to be confirmed. Yeah, he's been a busy boy, Liam, but today we're going to focus most of our attention on the on-the-field matters at Stamford Bridge. After it was confirmed, Antonio Rudiger will follow his fellow centreback Andreas Christensen out of the club this summer.

It's all very narrow, but it's all very Chelsea.

Rudiger going for glory again! Oh my God, he's finally done it!

Four years he's been threatening that Tony Rudiger.

Four years! Yeah, Flo Liam, Tony Rudiger, four years.

Yeah, Flo Liam wrote the other day, this is emphatically not a crisis, so why is this angst creating the whiff of one? I think this was off the back of Saezas, Aspleuqueh having a bit of a Barney with a Chelsea supporter at the end of the Arsenal game. It's a real strange time at Stanford Bridge, isn't it? Empty seats all over the place because

of the current situation. They're probably cemented in third, so there isn't much to play for.

No, it does feel just like a weird time at Chelsea. Yeah, it really does. And Liam references

in the piece how they've still got an FA Cup final to fight for. So they could probably, they're probably going

to get third. They're probably going to qualify fairly comfortably for the Champions League.

We've got an FA Cup final as well. So on reflection, actually, it's been a fairly successful

season. I think what really in references in the piece is the fact that they, again, aren't challenging for a Premier League title.

And with all the success that Chelsea have had over the last couple of decades, that's obviously really disappointing for fans.

But I do think the way that they're losing to such a big London rival like Arsenal just adds a little bit of a sting to it.

I think if it hadn't been a game like that and Arsenal have really dominated the meetings

in recent years, that just makes things a little bit more painful and then a surprise defeat

to Brentford, another local rival, obviously only just got into the Premier League. That's going to

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