London is Blue Dispatch #070

It is the 96^th minute at a raucous Old Trafford. Levi Colwill & Wes Fofana stay in the United box after a set-piece, as Robert Sanchez launches a long ball into the box. The ball is cleared by De Ligt, and in the blink of an eye, Alejandro Garnacho has possession in the Chelsea attacking 3rd. United have a 3v2 advantage on the last line, with both Chelsea centerbacks caught close to the halfway line.

Colwill pulls wide to help Reece who is outnumbered by the wing pairing of Garnacho and Amad, but Fofana can only watch as the unmarked Zirkzee makes a lethal near post run into the space he should have been guarding. As Garnacho fires in his cutback, Zirkzee shapes his body to guide it in from three yards. For a second, a million breaths freeze – waiting for the net to ripple, for United to offer cold vengeance for the trauma inflicted by Cole Palmer last season. Instead, the ball, somehow, goes out for a corner, stolen off Zirkzee’s toes by one the far-reaching tentacles of el Pulpo, Moises Caicedo.

Most of his teammates walk straight past his exhausted body on the grass to defend the corner, heads bowed in sheepish embarrassment at an abject loss of focus. Only Sanchez rushes straight to Caicedo, whispering furious words of part encouragement part gratitude, helping him rise for one last action. The resulting corner proves to be the last kick of the game. At the final whistle, Moi goes straight down to his knees in prayer, head bowed in thanks. If the rest of the Chelsea squad had decided to do show their thanks for surviving a brutal run of fixtures with mild bruising, their heads should have bowed in deference to him.

That last minute of heroic intervention did not even make it to the club’s extended highlights video, which instead focused on the more aesthetically pleasing aspects of his game – that perfectly executed volley that restored parity to the scoreboard.

Can Chelsea win dirty?

There was one statistic that waved a massive red flag before Chelsea embarked on a run of punishing fixtures against Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester United and Arsenal. While the Blues have hovered in or around the top three in the league for goals scored, their shot count has been average at best, fluctuating between 11^th and 7^th for the past few weeks. Would a shot-shy side struggle for goals when up against high-level opposition? And if there were no goals to rely on from the incredible Jackson-Palmer duo, then how would the side cope?

While Jackson and Palmer fired in the Newcastle game, they managed only 1 G/A in the other three. All three sides interestingly used the same strategy to unsettle the Blues – using a 4-2-4 to close access to the central players and using two players to blunt Palmer’s effectiveness on his less-preferred left side. It was in each of these tightly contested games that Chelsea found its answer to a question they’ve been nervously asking themselves since last season – if not Palmer, then who?

Moi, of course, does not provide the same tangible game-changing impact that Palmer’s enthralling goals and assist provide. The 23-year-old Ecuadorian, quite like his idol N’golo Kante, is a soft-spoken, cold-blooded assassin, a slight man who casts a long, imposing shadow in his vicinity. He currently sits 8^th in the league for passes into the final third, underlining his progressive strengths centrally, but more fittingly he is also 1^st in Europe’s top 5 leagues for dribblers tackled, 2^nd for total tackles and 4^th for tackles won.

In each of those big games against top 4 rivals, he was easily Chelsea’s standout player – delivering from the engine room against a diverse range of technical and physical pivot partnerships. All this, in a side where his manager is still trying to figure out rest of the midfield around him. A consistently brilliant run of form since the end of last season culminated in Enzo Maresca entrusting him with the captain’s armband against Arsenal.

Once more the Octopus proved pivotal, marshalling the coveted ground in the middle of both boxes, telling Malo Gusto where to stand to exploit the flaw in Arsenal’s press, lunging in front of Trossard’s shot from point blank range to make him blast it over goal, a 93^rd minute perfectly timed sliding tackle on the surging Timber to ensure another point was preserved.

For now, Chelsea and Maresca’s key issues seem to center around him – how to keep him fir & healthy as fixtures come thick & fast and rotation becomes progressively tougher, and who to play next to him. More long trips to and fro to South America beckon, with Ecuador considering him equally indispensable in their World Cup Qualifying efforts. But for now, there is a great sense of delight and relief in watching someone step into the meteor-sized crater left in Chelsea’s midfield by the departure of past titans.