Remember how optimistic everyone felt about Chelsea going into 2025-26?Many in the game felt the club were making significant strides towards becoming a top team again. Yet here we are in late May, and the club’s supporters will be pleased the campaign is over, so they can start forgetting about it as soon as possible.Well, before dragging your painful memories to the same trash can you shoved 2022-23 in, here is one last look back with The Athletic’s annual season review.Chelsea’s grade for 2025-26 is… EWhat a disappointment it has been. There is some mitigation. It was Enzo Maresca’s decision to leave in January, and that had a huge impact on the second half of the season, but the club chose Liam Rosenior to replace him as head coach, and that backfired badly.Calum McFarlane, who was employed last summer to be the club’s under-21s coach, has had two spells as interim first-team boss. That says it all.Over £100million of the summer budget was spent on Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Alejandro Garnacho, and they all failed to make an impression.Qualifying for the Champions League via a top-five finish was seen as the bare minimum. Their hopes basically ended with a run of six straight league defeats between March and May. Only a spectacular late Joao Pedro strike against Nottingham Forest saved them from losing all six without finding the net, for the first time in club history.Chelsea finished bottom of the Premier League fair play table for the second time in three seasons, accumulating a ridiculous eight red cards, double the number of next-worst Tottenham (the total was 11 across all competitions).Key players Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella spoke out against the hierarchy, while a section of fans organised protests. A seventh successive domestic final defeat in the FA Cup against Manchester City, plus finishing among the also-rans in the top division, was a fitting way to end it.Goal of the seasonStamford Bridge was at its loudest when Estevao’s individual effort against Barcelona in November hit the back of the net.All the talk pre-match had been about the visitors’ own teenage attacking talent, Lamine Yamal. However, Estevao’s name was the one on everyone’s lips after he waltzed past a bewildered Barca defence to put Chelsea two goals up (they went on to win 3-0).Pau Cubarsi looked like a London tourist trying to figure out which way to go to find Big Ben as Estevao danced past, and Alejandro Balde did not do much better as he came across to cover. The Brazilian still had a lot to do, but he sent a fierce shot in with his right foot off the underside of the bar.