From title challengers to top-four contenders to reviving the undercur­rent of dissatisfaction with the club’s direction, quite the recent slide for Chelsea. Thomas Tuchel, on an ­England scouting visit, will have seen few of the players he left behind in 2022. He will, though, have been reminded of the permanent jeopardy of the Chelsea manager.

Previously the safe pair of hands guiding the Chelsea project, Enzo Maresca’s cachet is wobbling after five winless games. Chelsea paid for a combination of callowness and profligacy against a bare‑bones Bournemouth. “The game was completely in our control,” Maresca said. “And it’s something we need to improve.”

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It took a scrubbing, added‑time free-kick from Reece James – openly criticised by Maresca, his Chelsea career raddled by injury, a ­survivor from Tuchel’s time – to prevent defeat. The club captain’s first ­Premier League goal since the August 2022 day when Tuchel and Antonio Conte got tangled up over a handshake. “I haven’t had that feeling in a long time,” James said, acknowledging: “I need to get a run of games playing again.”

Chelsea’s strong-arm approach had created chances from the ­opening seconds, first Enzo Fernández losing his footing when the goal beckoned. Meanwhile, Bournemouth’s David Brooks had already taken a crunch to the chops from Marc Cucurella. That was revisited in the second half, when Brooks escaped a red card – the ­referee, Rob Jones, watching the offence on screen – when seeming to pull down Cucurella by the hair. “How can he got give this?” said Maresca, raging as yellow was instead waved.

“There is no violence,” Iraola said, anger deflected back to Cucurella for the defender’s role in disturbing the Bournemouth wall for James’s free‑kick. “Cucurella is touching [Antoine] Semenyo and they scored.”

Still, he was happy with the result. “When you consider how Chelsea played and we played, I don’t think we deserved to win.”

The first Chelsea goal had come quickly, Cole Palmer’s finish full of a swagger that was not sustained even though Iraola’s selection reflected a squad bearing a heavy load; just 12 senior players to call on, no strikers.

In the spirit of the January window, the teenage Spanish-Dutchman Dean Huijsen is one of four Bournemouth starters currently linked with ­Chelsea, along with Milos Kerkez, Semenyo and Illia Zabarnyi. Each of them bar perhaps Zabarnyi, spun by Jackson for the opener, added value.

Chelsea desire to sell Axel ­Disasi opens the door for Josh ­Acheampong in defence. The ­teenager is understood to be admired among the club’s hierarchy though was culpable for ­Bournemouth’s ­second goal. As the club’s PA announcer gushed in Stamford Bridge’s Americanised pre-match ­festivities – including kiss cam – the average age of ­Chelsea’s squad is under 23.

Maresca could make 10 changes from the weekend’s stroll past ­Morecambe. No such luxury for Iraola, forced to bring on the sole ­senior sub in Justin Kluivert once James Hill pulled up after barely 20 ­minutes. Lewis Cook, the captain, played emergency full-back, and excelled.

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The unreliable side of Nicolas Jackson was seen after Noni Madueke laid on a chance missed horribly. Next, Iraola’s shoulders sagged after Kluivert hit the post and then ­Chelsea blasted back on a counter that ­finished with Jackson now hitting the post. “We cannot play as slow as we were ­playing,” the Basque said.

After 13 first-half shots to that Kluivert effort, Chelsea should have been able to end their recent travails. “We got in and the manager wasn’t happy,” said Semenyo, who soon turned inside Moisés Caicedo, another midfielder at full-back, to win a penalty. Kluivert, having notched three spot-kicks against Wolves, comfortably sent Robert Sánchez the wrong way.

As if Maresca was belatedly correcting a player out of position, James was thrown on, Caicedo restored to midfield as Bournemouth brimmed with vim and vigour, Brooks’s clash with Cucurella as leading example.

Maresca was by now scraping his cranium in Guardiola-like exaspera­tion as Jackson failed to close down Ryan Christie. The ­back-­pedalling Acheampong showed Semenyo an inside route to goal that the ­Chelsea‑born forward did not pass up. “A shift and shoot,” Semenyo said. “I knew what I was going to do.”

After several Chelsea panic buttons were pushed and despite James’s personal redemption, full time was greeted with a sagging, audible indifference. Tuchel, his seat by now vacant, would doubtless recognise it.