Football news - Maurizio Sarri exposed in adaption of King's New Clothes for King's Road, Chelsea

With ten minutes left on the clock, and the home side trailing to also rans from the Midlands, you'd expect Stamford Bridge to be livid.

Impassioned cries of support, stadium-uniting chants, and open displays of massed frustration are what this place excels at.

But on Sunday, at a quarter to four, there was barely a murmur out of Chelsea's home support.

A few went home early, but for the most part people seemed resigned to their fate.

Chelsea fans are used to managers who set records.

With Antonio Conte it was the record-equalling 13-game winning run. Under Carlo Ancelotti the most goals scored in a Premier League campaign. And under Jose Mourinho the meanest defence and most Premier League points.

Under Maurizio Sarri, the club records have been less enticing: the worst two defeats in Chelsea's Premier League history.

This weekend, they were on the brink of succumbing to the first league double over them by Wolverhampton Wanderers since 1975 - until Eden Hazard grabbed a late point.

But, even after all that, the boos that usually greet such a dreadful performance and result, were muted.

Chelsea's support is tired. Tired of a season that seems to be going nowhere (with the proviso of a yet-to-be-decided outcome in the Europa League). Tired of a manager who seems unable to improve a side, and unwilling to make the changes necessary to do so (the qualifier again being the late tactical change here – his first in his eight months).

But most of all they are tired of a form of football they are repeatedly told they are supposed to like.

“Did you not see Napoli last season?” is the constant refrain by those who would cast themselves as 'experts' in the game.

Yeah. Dunno. Probably.

Whatever this manager's model of football is supposed to look like, attractive it ain't.

And another thing it definitely isn't is 'improving'.

The picture being painted by this particular artist is still unfathomable from this point, three-quarters of the way into the season.

There are still those insisting Sarriball, despite the complete lack of trophies in a two-decade tour of action, is a thing of wonder.

Granted, not many of them seemed to be in the ground on Sunday: that, for the most part, was full of people wondering exactly when the punchline to this unfunny gag might materialise.

Hans Christian Andersen wrote it, but it was a story never better told than by Danny Kaye – in musical form, in the film that bears the Dane's name.

The King, goes the tale, was sold a new suit: which all his advisors queued up, desirous not to put a foot wrong, to proclaim a thing of beauty.

All until one small boy said the unthinkable: those threads that are so fine, those seams you can barely detect, those colours which are so rare... there's nothing there!

Stamford Bridge is that small boy: stood wondering why so many of those on the outside still insist this King's new clothes are a catwalk-worthy.

Right now he's mustering the courage to call out what seems to him to be blindingly obvious.