Post a moral victory over United, a description for the start of Chelsea’s season so far is an illusive substance. After nine games, we sit at the top of the league having suffered only one draw and defeat respectively. What’s there to complain about? After three games in the Champions League, we sit second in our group with our destiny in our own hands. Chelsea is comfortable and playing attractive football. Given the anticipated problems of integrating new players and forging a new approach, everything looks much better than expected.
Yet, however pleasing a positive result may be, don’t managers tend to reflect on the performance first and foremost? Winning a match because the referee sent off two of your opponent’s players is not nearly as constructive as winning a match through effervescent flair and determination. Losing a match because of a poor, potentially complacent performance in a distant second-world country is worse than losing because you were ‘Clattenburged’.
The point is this: Chelsea have not won a game without playing well. Let’s not underrate Shakhtar, they are a formidable prospect for any team at the Donbass, where their record is nothing less than astonishing. Chelsea started poorly, were second best, and were consequently beaten. Against United, Chelsea started poorly and eventually suffered because of it, leaving aside the cloud of controversy which refuses to clear over Stamford Bridge these days. If winning without playing well is a mark of champions, than that is something we have not yet seen from Chelsea.
But what about the ‘tests’ which Chelsea have overcome so far? Is that supposed to mean Arsenal away? Seriously, that wasn’t a test, that was a match against a team that sells its best players, buys dubious ones, and whose approach to any game is as predictable as Wenger is dogmatic and anachronistic. They suffer an inexplicable reverse, then are utterly hopeless for a period thereafter - probably finish in the top third nevertheless.
And Tottenham away? If their inferiority complex had perhaps lifted given results in recent years, injecting a Chelsea-reject as manager and deploying one as captain can’t have been in the psychiatrist’s recommendations. Missing Bale and Dembele also meant that Chelsea were playing against a Spurs team bereft of their most dangerous components. We can say that Chelsea were tested, but it was not a test.
Chelsea’s genuine examinations have come against United and Shakhtar and both games were lost. Apart from not turning up until halfway through the first-half in both games, Chelsea currently have an obvious tactical weakness. Their transition from attack to defence is shambolic. This is not necessarily the fault of the player’s, even though some of them might be a little too impetuous. It’s the system that is to blame and it was ruthlessly exposed in our two defeats. The full-backs have to provide width to Chelsea’s attacks, which leaves them exposed in two possible senses when Chelsea lose the ball (which happens far too cheaply and frequently): Firstly, they are often too high up the pitch to defend their nominal zones when teams counterattack; or secondly, are left outnumbered because there is no one to help in front of them.
Ferguson saw what happened in Ukraine and was inevitably going to exploit the evident weaknesses Chelsea have immediately after losing the ball. Other teams with effective wingers will have taken note. Teams which choose to play a counter-attacking game against Chelsea (probably most of them), know they will get some joy that way. We have seen in the past that a reliance on out-scoring your opponents is not a successful long-term strategy.
So how would I describe Chelsea’s season so far? Too busy enjoying the beauty of it all to see the minefield. KTBFFH!
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