Guest Author: Mark Weasley of retrofootballnews.com
When Chelsea won the league last season, they were at their brilliant best. Playing some breath-taking football and displaying an efficiency rarely seen in the division, they won the league courtesy of a 13-match winning sequence out of the 30 wins they recorded. They also reached 93 points, just 2 points behind the record haul of 95, set by Jose Mourinho’s swashbuckling side of 2004/05.
This season, however, has seen Chelsea struggle for form and consistency with their manager, Antonio Conte, coming in for criticism at the beginning of the season following a bad run.
This campaign, Chelsea have fallen foul of the Premier League’s regular curse, that sees teams failing to defend their league title. No team has successfully won consecutive league titles since Manchester United managed the feat from 2006-09.
After winning the league so comfortably last year, Chelsea were expected to challenge for the title again this year and have a good run in the Champions League.
N’Golo Kanté – One of the not too many world-class players at Chelsea
There are few players in the Chelsea team who are truly world class. Hazard, Courtois, Kanté, Fàbregas and Willian are all brilliant players on their day, but there are other players who wouldn’t cut it at other top sides in this division or elsewhere in Europe.
Chelsea have been linked to players such as Christian Benteke, Andy Carroll, Peter Crouch and even Ashley Barnes to add backup to the striking department which is lacking a player in good form.
For a team of Chelsea’s standards, none of those players are the solution given that a number of their rivals are spending big money on the likes of Virgil Van Dijk and Alexis Sánchez.
Chelsea should have improved on their playing personnel in the summer, not just signed players who were direct replacements for players who had left. A team looking to improve on the previous season needs to strengthen with better quality but, sadly enough, Chelsea didn’t do that and find themselves struggling for inspiration from everyone except Hazard and Willian.
Back in September, Chelsea faced Manchester City at Stamford Bridge. City were just beginning their 18-match winning sequence. The Citizens had quality in all departments and completely outplayed Chelsea while defeating them 1-0, a fact not lost on Chelsea manager, Antonio Conte, who has continually moaned about his lack of support from the club hierarchy.
Allowing Nemaja Matić to leave for Manchester United is proving to be a mistake
Álvaro Morata and Tiemoué Bakayoko have failed to add quality or reach the levels of consistency their predecessors, Diego Costa and Nemanja Matic achieved at Stamford Bridge.
Morata and Bakayoko are fantastic international players, but are finding the intensity and level of the Premier League a little too high for their liking.
Letting Matic and Costa go is now looking like a bad piece of business given that both men were crucial members of their title-winning squads of 2015 and 2017.
Chelsea are looking like the third best team in England at the moment, and for a club owner like Roman Abramovich, this is unacceptable. He must cough up some of that cash of his to help them return to where they belong.
Read more from Mark at retrofootballnews.com
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