1. Nemanja Matic, Chelsea’s Magic
Chelsea had to do without different players at various points this season but the squad could easily cope with the injuries and suspensions. Courtois injured? Petr Cech stepped up. Costa injured/suspended? Didier Drogba did the job. Schurrle down with flu? Willian popped up with good performances. Sadly, the same can’t be said of Nemanja Matic’s absence.
Till the weekend, Nemanja Matic had completed 840 passes this season, second only to Cesc Fabregas and Yaya Toure. He has a pass completion rate of 89% and a forward pass rate of 74%. He has played every minute of Chelsea’s 14 Premier League games this season. Was he missed against Newcastle? You bet. Mikel was Matic’s deputy for the weekend. While he did well, it just wasn’t enough. Matic is more adventurous with his passing. At any given time, he looks to make a forward pass. Short or long, he looks for the forward pass. As a duo with Fabregas, he makes this Chelsea team tick. While he has had several great performances since his return to Chelsea which more that justified the 21 million fee Benfica received, it was in his absence versus Newcastle that his value was truly known. Matic is the glue that holds this team together, the magic that dazzles the others.
2. A defeat that needs to be reduced to a blip
The whole ‘invincible’ circus, in a way, looked like a major distraction than anything. With this defeat, that has been put to bed and normal duties can/should resume. Being resolute in defending and riding their luck, Newcastle perhaps deserved the victory. Mourinho has always insisted that a defeat would surely come at some point in the season and that it is extremely difficult to go undefeated for an entire season. Like he said, the defeat came at the hands of Al Pardiola(!) and what matters now is how the team reacts to it. While one defeat isn’t a big thing, Mourinho needs to make sure that it was just a minor blip in the season and the team reacts positively vs Sporting Lisbon mid-week.
Source: nufc.co.uk
3. December is too early to analyse the table
One look at the Premier League table and you’ll notice Manchester City right behind Chelsea. Only three points separates the title hopefuls, intriguingly. Time to panic? Not if you look more closely at the games played by both teams. Chelsea have traveled to both Manchester clubs, Everton, Liverpool, Sunderland and Newcastle. Four ‘most’ difficult places to go and two bogey teams, in Chelsea’s case. All that out of the way with Chelsea sitting at the top of the table.
While Chelsea could largely cope with injures and suspensions, it will now be interesting to see how Manchester City cope with Sergio Aguero’s injury. While David Silva injured for a while, he has carried the Man City team for large parts of this season. Compared to Aguero, Edin Dzeko isn’t as prolific and Steven Jovetic is even more injury prone. How the Man City team cope with this loss will decide Man City’s role in the title hunt. Will they be toothless without Aguero or will Dzeko and Jovetic be able deputies? Either way, December is way too early to start making judgments based on the Premier League table.
4. Squad Rotation
If it’s not broke, don’t fix. Mourinho seems to live by this principle, as the lack of squad rotation shows. At a time when Chelsea played 3 games in a space of 8 days, most expected Mourinho to make full use of Chelsea’s strong squad to keep players fresh for each game. Mourinho had other plans though, as he stuck to the strongest available team in each game. While the team didn’t look particularly tired in any of the three games, it’ll slowly start showing it’s effects on the players if rotation of some sort wasn’t used. The sparse use of Felipe Luis, Loic Remy, Andre Schurrle and Kurt Zouma is certainly baffling at a time when matches are coming in thick and fast. That, and individual mistakes by Ivanovic/Cahill at the weekend should be the perfect reasons to give players Zouma and Luis some time on the pitch to make their case for a place in the starting XI.
Vela
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