IAN LADYMAN: Todd Boehly’s broken Blues are a far cry from the club’s former heroes

The banners bearing the names of the Chelsea greats on the Stamford Bridge stands are starting to look a bit faded and worn round the edges.

Frank Lampard, John Terry and Didier Drogba will always be legends in this part of West London but this club is not what it once was.

Drogba himself said as much in the preamble to a night that saw the modern Chelsea’s ambitions of a great comeback fall on the back of a familiar shortcoming. An awful lot of effort and absolutely no goals.

Drogba, the great Ivorian striker who scored so many times for Chelsea, said on French TV that he no longer recognised the club. That’s strong but it’s easy to see his point. The strength of character, steadfastness and reliability of quality that ran through so many of the Roman Abramovich years are so no more.

This defeat pretty much marks the end of the great Lampard experiment, as the second time of asking. Brought back in to try and steady the Chelsea dressing room and find some results, it’s a mission that is over already. Four games, four defeats and one goal.

Still, though, Chelsea are a club crying out for something that Lampard and his ilk once represented. In the second half Lampard made a triple substitution as Raheem Sterling, Joao Felix and Mykhailo Mudryk came on at once. Those three cost up towards £150m between them. But as Real walked their second goal in to the net with ten minutes left it was more clear than ever that it is not money alone that will save this club and this team.

The turbulence at Chelsea this season can in many ways be illustrated by statistics but also by personnel. They are on their third manager, which tells you one thing, while the make-up of the team continues to swirl from one week to the next.

Lampard’s team here did not look like one picked to win a football match, rather to stay in one for as long as possible. Nor did it look like the one chosen by predecessor Graham Potter for his final game in charge a month ago — just five outfield players remained — or indeed by Thomas Tuchel for day one of this season way back in August. Lampard was actually Everton manager as Chelsea won 1-0 that day with a team from which only four survived for this one.

For all the understandable talk of the strange and far-reaching influence of Chelsea’s part-owner Todd Boehly, it has been on the field where Chelsea have continued to look the most confused. Potter — for all that he was failed by Boehly — never really seemed to know his best team, while Tuchel began the campaign telling people Raheem Sterling was the answer to his team’s goalscoring problems. That was never going to play well. Sterling has scored four league goals since leaving Manchester City and began this one on the bench.

All this change has robbed Chelsea of many things and one of them has been consistency and the authority that often comes with that. The great Chelsea teams of the last two decades were always infused with new players on a regular basis. It was the only way to satisfy Roman Abramovich, an owner who liked few things more than the sound of the dressing room door opening and a new Galactico walking in.

Underpinning all that, though, was persistent and reliable quality. Lampard served 13 years. Terry gave a year shy of two decades. Drogba was there for eight in his first spell while Ashley Cole gave identical service.

This Chelsea — Boehly’s Chelsea — claims to be a club for the long term but the only thing they have to back that up is some new players on fat, long contracts. The longest-serving player in the team picked by Lampard, barring academy products, was N’Golo Kante, nearing the end of his seventh season.

So this team lacks some identity and the sense of purpose that often comes with that then it is not hard to see why.

Chelsea do not lack quality but that is not the issue. The way they pressed Real Madrid back for much of the first half spoke of a collective desire and indeed of some kind of game plan. But what is missing is a clear sense of who and what they are and indeed how they are supposed to play.

Not for the first time, the lack of a centre forward killed them in the opening half. Their two best chances fell to Kante, a holding player, and Marc Cucurella, a left-sided defender. Real, meanwhile, soaked up some pressure for 20 minutes and then promptly hit the post with their first attack.

It’s hard to watch Chelsea without thinking what they would look like with a proper forward playing through the middle, worrying teams, stretching teams, holding up play and creating space and opportunities for those around him. And the more you think about it the more negligent it seems that they don’t have one.

Their big moment of the second half – and maybe the game – arrived early. Again Kante was the furthest player forward and again he couldn’t take it. it’s not his fault. He was generally impressive here doing the part of the job for which he is paid. But had that chance gone in then this tie was alive. Ten minutes later, Real did score and the tie was dead.