Panic on the streets of (West) London

The international break was both brilliantly and atrociously placed. Brilliant so Jose Mourinho can sit and plan how to turn around this poor start to the season ready for the game at Goodison on Saturday, yet atrocious as it has created an echo chamber on Twitter for moaning about the events of the season so far without the hope of a game soon to come up immediately.

There has been moaning about Mourinho, about Fabregas, about Terry, about Cahill, about Ivanovic… the list goes on, and only very little of it actually warranted. However, this amount of pressure and expectation is part and parcel with being a team who came first last year and is aiming to retain that title. In addition, only two of the performances so far have been particularly bad, the two losses against Man City and Crystal Palace. However, let’s start at the very beginning (ignoring the glorified friendly that is the Community Shield), with the draw against Swansea.

Chelsea weren’t in control in our opener against Swansea, but looked comfortable until Thibaut Courtois’ sending off. Whilst Swansea had looked dangerous, indeed having more shots than we had, we had looked decent, and should really have created and scored more but were wasteful with our possession. After Bafetimbi Gomis had converted his penalty, and Chelsea down to ten men, it was still the Blues who looked ever so slightly more likely to get a winner, however good defending by Swansea and ineffective chance creating by Chelsea, as well as Swansea wasting a couple of chances meant it remained 2-2. We weren’t terrible in this game, coming up a solid Swansea side with the means to punish any mistakes we made. The less said about the storm-in-a-teacup saga about John Fearn and Eva Carniero, the better.

Source: PA

Next up was an absolutely shocking performance at the Etihad Stadium, where we were comfortably beaten by an impressive Manchester City side, who have subsequently been strengthened by the arrivals of Kevin De Bruyne and Nicolas Otamendi. Asmir Begovic made an impressive debut despite conceding three goals, having kept that number much lower than it could have been with some great saves, particularly a string of three world class ones to stop Sergio Aguero, and all three goals being pretty much unsaveable; a similar performance to Thibaut Courtois’ at White Hart Lane last season, where it was his defence that let him down. Jose called the final score a “fake result,” with two goals coming from silly individual errors, but at the very top, teams are lethal, and two mistakes is two too many.

Third time was the charm for Mourinho’s men, as Pedro was the star at The Hawthorns. This was my first game of this season, and it was a real pleasure to see the impact that Pedro had made in the matter of days he had been at Cobham, with a goal and assist as well as numerous other chances created which should have been put away. Again, a lapse in concentration and then being down to ten men allowed West Brom back into the game, however some good defending by Kurt Zouma and Co., and what turned out to be a vital penalty save early in the game by the returning Courtois ensured Chelsea got all three points. This attacking performance has been the only time we’ve looked properly threatening in any of our games so far, and even then we’ve been nowhere near ruthless enough with our shot conversion.

Finally, the last game before the international break was that loss to Crystal Palace at home. Only their second ever win at the Bridge in their history, and only Jose’s second loss in the league at home, after the impressiveness of the win at West Brom, this was yet again a dire performance. Palace could have had two more were they not wasteful, and Bolasie was given the freedom of the left flank, as Montero had been in the Swansea game. There were positives however; Falcao with a well taken goal, and impressive performances from Kenedy on his debut and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

Source: chelseafc.com

So, who is at fault? Who should we all be calling a fraud on Twitter, directing our anger and frustration at? Well, firstly, if Jose is to be believed, he gave the Board a list of targets before the game at Leicester last season, meaning they should have been well prepared to get those targets well before the start of the season, like was done last summer, yet this was not the case. In addition, where last season we shunned traipsing over the Atlantic chasing the dollar to focus on getting the players’ fitness, this season we travelled to North America, being based in Montreal whilst travelling to New York, Charlotte and Washington D.C. for friendlies, but the main problem was that we started this pre-season routine well after all our competitors had. Where we had succeeded and gained an advantage last season, our opponents had learned the lesson that we had forgot.

Player wise, too many players haven’t been on the form they were last season, many indeed looking tired. Ivanovic has been dire in the past four games, and only really protected by the fact there was no real option to drop him, however with Baba Rahman’s arrival, there is now the option of putting him at left back with Azpilicueta returning to his natural right back, something I’m expecting to see Jose do at Goodison. In addition, there was the shocking statistic that Cesc Fabregas has misplaced the second most passes of any player this season, with one of those leading to Fernandinho’s third for City. It was said last season that he can be a liability in bigger games where we need more defensive protection in front of the back four, and this has been evident in all our games this season. A switch to 4-3-3 has been suggested, which was effective in the early part of the 13/14 season when a Lampard-Ramires double pivot was judged to have lacked defensive stability by Jose (leading to Luiz playing as a DM until Matic’s arrival), however I would like to see Oscar been given a chance to team up with Hazard and Pedro to form a superb attacking trio. If Oscar isn’t fit on Saturday, then perhaps a Ramires/Mikel/RLC partnering Matic and Fabregas in midfield could be an effective way to break down a strong attacking Everton side.

Others not on form include Matic, Cahill (whereas Zouma has been fantastic whenever called upon), Hazard, Costa, and John Terry, who is being written off just like he was under Rafa Benitez. However, if there is one person I have confidence in, it is Jose Mourinho. I am unmoving in my opinion that he is the best man for the job, and the best manager in world football. If you were to call on anyone to turn this situation around, it would be him. I have seen people panicking, comparing Djilobogy to Ben Haim, and the start of this season to the start of 2007/08, and mentioning the three season stay Mourinho has as a habit, inspired by Bela Guttman. However, having signed a four year contract extension on the eve of the new season, and saying numerous times that he will see out his contract and stay at Chelsea for as long as Roman Abramovich wants him, this hysteria is unfounded.