Leeds for the Cup? On form, morale, unity and gut feeling, they are many people’s favourites to beat Chelsea on Sunday.

Looking at this weekend’s FA Cup semi-finals, you can even see how the relegation battlers could end up with the trophy.

Buoyed by a last-ditch equaliser at Brighton that took them nine points above the drop zone, they’re firing on all cylinders while Chelsea has stalled.

The world club champions have been winless and goalless for five games and are now managerless. The last time they had such a run was in 1912.

Liam Rosenior was their latest fall guy. Sacked on Tuesday, he could be due some £24m in compensation. Not bad for 106 days’ work.

The Blues are in turmoil on and off the field, with players disillusioned and fans protesting. They are there to be taken.

And if Leeds do the job, they are likely to face Manchester City, who are heavily fancied to beat second-tier Southampton on Saturday.

But in the final, City could be preoccupied by the title race, which concludes a week later. By then, Leeds will almost certainly be safe.

But the story of the week is Chelsea, with the football world asking: How did it come to this?

Rewind to 2022 and the sale of the club by Roman Abramovich, enforced by the British government because Russia invaded Ukraine.

Enter, along a path well-trodden by American owners, Todd Boehly’s Blueco, an investment vehicle controlled by Clearlake.

The main man at Clearlake is Iranian-born American Behdad Eghbali, one of private equity’s youngest billionaires. Both are clever dudes.

As you might expect, they came with a swagger and talked big. They told the inventors of the game how to run it.

Long contracts. Young players. Lots of them. “They’re assets,” they said, “that will increase in value.”

“They don’t realise how big their opportunity is,” Boehly told a private equity conference in Berlin shortly after the takeover. Let’s get a hold of our destiny and think about how to optimise this.”

Well, they certainly didn’t hedge their bets.

They paid £4.25 billion for the club, which was considered high, and have spent another £1.5bn on players – almost 50 at the latest count.

There were so many, they had to have two squads and separate training sessions. At one stage, there were eight goalkeepers.

The manager, whoever he was, couldn’t keep tabs on all of them.

It was a brilliant way of causing division, confusion and delaying the integration of new recruits.

They also showed clubs how to keep inside EPL spending limits by exploiting long contracts and amortisation.

Well, until FIFA wised up and limited contracts to five years.

Contrary to industry opinion, the Americans boasted that they’d bought Chelsea cheaply.

Boehly claimed: “The whole football industry is heavily undervalued. All the big English clubs will be worth tens of billions in the next decade.”

And to help poor clubs lower down the pyramid, he suggested an All-Star game to raise funds.

In a jam-packed fixture list, it was another lead balloon. Any more brilliant ideas, Todd?

Well, yes. “Buy low, sell high” was his advice. The trouble was, Chelsea did the opposite.

They broke the British record by paying £105m for a fledgling Enzo Fernandes, who had played just 29 times for Benfica.

And they spent £88m for Mykhailo Mudryk, hardly a veteran after 44 games for Shakhtar Donetsk.

They were just as generous when it came to selling.

They let Arsenal have Jorginho for just £12m, while Forest picked up a ‘special offer’ in Calum Hudson-Odoi for just £3m!

Yet they don’t have a top-draw goalkeeper despite having eight on the books at once.

Nor a solid centreback. Nor anyone with real experience.

Marc Cucurella, the eminence grise at 27, spoke out recently about the need for old heads.

It’s no surprise that managers became frustrated.

In charge, when they came in, was Thomas Tuchel, who guided the club to Champions League glory with victory over City.

But they didn’t see eye-to-eye and brought in Graham Potter, the second of five permanent managers, none of whom were the right fit.

The last, Rosenior, was moved from Stuttgart, also owned by Blueco, but when it came to showing his medals, he was a beginner.

An assistant coach at Derby, he managed at Hull City and Strasbourg with no notable success.

Tuchel, the current England boss, lists Borussia Dortmund, Bayern and PSG on his CV as well as Chelsea where he won the ultimate prize.

No wonder the fans are bewildered and even chant for Abramovich.

The owners have been just as dumb with the finances. Despite their reputed Midas touch, they racked up pre-tax losses of £262m, the biggest in EPL history.

Recently, budgetary problems have been controversially solved by selling hotels, car parks and the women’s team to themselves.

They are also in danger of missing the deadline to acquire a nearby site for a new stadium.

With match-day income several million less than clubs with 60,000 plus capacities, Chelsea finds it hard to compete with rivals.

But leaving Stamford Bridge requires a 75% majority from the Chelsea Pitch Owners, who own the freehold.

Given the way the club’s owners are performing, they are not going to get it. It’s not been what anyone calls “optimising”.

A recent survey of more than 4,000 fans by the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust found that a majority were “very unconfident” that the club was “being run in a way that will deliver sustained on-pitch success”.

It really has been quite an achievement to damage a club on this scale with a cash burn beyond even Abramovich levels.

Now the owners say they will have “a period of self-reflection”. Sadly, fans doubt whether they can find a mirror big enough.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.