We Are The Champions, The Champions of England

Loic Remy and Kurt Zouma hold the banner which confirms Chelsea’s achievement in the absence of the actual trophy

There might not have been a pandemonium and euphoric “Agueroooooooo” moment to seal it, and there might not have been the sight of the trophy being hoisted high in the sky by our captain, but the feelings of happiness and glee felt by all Chelsea fans, far and wide, made this final confirmation of our supremacy in English football for the first time in 5 years something special. As Madness’ song ‘One Step Beyond’ rang round the stadium, a nice reflection of how Chelsea were one step beyond everyone else, the title party started, and you could see how much the title meant to the players and to the fans. For some fans, it was the 5^th title. For some like me, and a couple of the players, the 4^th. And for those newer fans who are new to the footballing world, and to a number of our newer recruits it’s the 1^st, and hopefully there will be many more.

As the Chelsea players left the pitch on Sunday, to start their own dressing room celebrations, the fans were all filtering out, ready to be dancing down Kings Road singing ‘Campeones Campeones’, or ‘Fabregas is magic, he wears a magic hat’. The party was in full swing, with the bank holiday serving as suitable reason to have more than just one celebratory drink.

Dressing Room celebrations

Some saw this coming back in October as we blitzed our way past teams with a swaggering, swashbuckling style with goals tending to come through Diego Costa via Cesc Fabregas. For others, the threat of City hunting us down after only being below us because of the alphabet after New Year’s day was very real, and the title was in doubt for spells, but never long enough doubt for it to truly be a concern.

New Year’s Day was a turning point in Chelsea’s season. Before, the team played with freedom, a willingness to attack, with the outlet of the enigmatic and mercurial Eden Hazard from the left, the animalistic, goal-hungry Diego Costa at the top of the pitch, and the deep-lying Cesc Fabregas serving up assists left, right and centre whilst accompanied with the Great Wall of Matic shielding the back four. Up until New Year’s Day, Chelsea were playing the best football in the land. We were lauded as potentially one of the all-time great Premier League sides, and whilst the “Boring, Boring Chelsea” chant may have been taken far too literally and seriously by pundits and fans alike, it is particularly important to stress that August to December 2014 Chelsea was anything but boring.

The goal that clinched it

Alas, it couldn’t last forever. The team imploded at White Hart Lane and whilst wanting to blank this match out of my mind forever, it proved to be an interesting turning point. The point at which the best attacking team in the league rolled up their sleeves and toughed it out, whilst those around faltered. City were level on points with Chelsea at New Year’s Day, but now find themselves 13 points adrift.

The team appeared well drilled, and whoever stepped into that back 5, whether it be Cech, Zouma or Filipe Luis, they all knew what to do in defence. The team’s defensive shape was compact, and Matic was afforded more assistance in the middle with Mikel, Ramires and Zouma all afforded game time alongside him in order to see the season through. After a 5-0 win at Swansea, our next 7 Premier League wins would all be sealed by a one goal margin. The team was very rarely victim to wholesale changes, but with injuries and suspensions in the business end of the season, the squad was stretched for moments, but never for a discernible period. In rushing back Diego Costa, he only made his injury worse, and despite a run of form, Loic Remy continued his tradition of the season of only being injured when Costa was and only fit when Costa was.

Celebrations after Hazard’s goal

Despite being undoubtedly worthy champions of England, that doesn’t mean we’re immune from criticism it would seem. The boring jibes. “Mourinho’s right, your fans are s****”. The team not consisting of 11 academy graduates. Losing to Bradford. Getting knocked out by PSG. Etc, etc. Rival fans trying to pick fault in any detail because it makes our supremacy seem more digestible. Arsenal fans can point to their spreadsheets and talk about buying titles by spending big as though they weren’t out on the streets celebrating Mesut Ozil’s signing like a title. Trying to put forth an argument about why we wouldn’t deserve the title is far easier than rivals looking to their own club and analysing their own failings as to why they weren’t able to challenge this team who they’re trying to make out is not all that.

We’re never going to be a popular club, particularly amongst the supporters of ailing dynasties like Liverpool who’ve been pushed out of relevancy by nouveaux-riche clubs, as well as supporters of Real Football who, like Greg Dyke, believe all teams in England should be manned by plucky Brits built on a shoestring budget, much like Burnley. But whilst that club doing it the right way are rock bottom, the team doing it the wrong way is at the summit. Makes you think doesn’t it?

The club has been in a state of evolution ever since Ancelotti won the title back in 2010, with the policy of out with the old, and in with the new generally stuck to in this period. Since Mourinho has returned to Chelsea, there has finally been concrete evidence of an evolution that is finally taking shape. Whilst Hazard, Oscar, Azpilicueta, Courtois and more were signed in the AVB and Di Matteo eras, the first real steps of progress were shown under Mourinho. Whilst Rafa Benitez guided us to 3^rd in his stint, it was a season where we finished long adrift of the title winners. Mourinho then guided us to third last season, although it could really have been much more if it wasn’t for some points dropped in disappointing circumstances. The gap was being bridged though, and with the arrivals of Matic, Fabregas and Costa, the key areas of the team that needed strengthening were addressed successfully, and the rewards for sorting out our weaknesses resulted in a Capital One Cup victory and a Premier League title. Not bad at all.

There have been several key men for me this season, but I think it is important to just give special mention to a small number of them. I shall gloss over PFA Player of the Year Eden Hazard because his player of the year award really speaks volumes about his quality and contribution this season. Firstly, I’d like to talk about Cesar ‘Dave’ Azpilicueta. The best full-back in the league in my eyes, and it doesn’t matter on which side you play him, you’ll always get at least an 8/10 performance. The decision to play him on the left side last season following Ashley Cole’s injury as opposed to PFA Team of the Year 2014/15 member Ryan Bertrand confused me slightly, but it was soon evident as to why. A real rock at the back, and alongside the marshalling, all-action captain who many thought was finished two years ago, they formed an almost impenetrable left side of defence.

John Terry has never been as lauded in his career as he has been at the minute, and all the recent lavishing of praise ahead of the Football Writer’s Player of the Year has been so deserved. Whilst it was Ricardo Carvalho who brought the best out of him back in 04/05, Terry is now bringing the best out of whoever partners him in defence. The progress of Zouma alongside him has been exceptional, particularly when you consider Zouma was far from a regular at Saint-Etienne, and now he leaves Stamford Bridge to the loud, emphatic chorus of his name repeated over and over. Zouma’s rate of development this season has been staggering, and whilst he’s not an academy graduate, he’s still essentially a youth player. Mourinho spoke of bringing through youngsters at Chelsea, and if he shows the faith he showed in Zouma this season in a couple of our young stars, we could hopefully see more exponential development in other players.

The PFA Player of the Year

Like all good achievements in the present, it’s only fair to look beyond and to see what the future holds. With great success across English and European youth football, the young talents are there at Chelsea, and making sure they make the next step is absolutely vital. Whilst I can’t see any loanees returning to make an impact, even the Chelsea fan cult hero Patrick Bamford, we have Jose’s word that Ruben Loftus-Cheek will be a first team player next season, and with the likes of Nathan Ake and Izzy Brown spending most of the season around the first team squad, it’d be nice to see them make the next step and push towards more game time. The difficulty comes though, in striking the right balance between experienced quality, and raw talent.

At the moment, the squad has a good balance between youth and experience (although some would argue more youth is needed) and maintaining that balance is going to be important going forward. The squad needs improvements in depth, and possibly even a big name or two to come and improve the starting eleven, but our lack of adequate, or quality depth has been evident this season in the fact we’ve only used 22 players – a league low. With the likelihood of Mikel and Cech on their way out, Ramires, Remy, Drogba, and even Filipe Luis could, I stress could, be on their way as well. If it is only Mikel and Cech who leave, the squad is left with 3 slots that can be filled by non-homegrown players, which could mean dips into the transfer market.

Mourinho has already hinted at improving our striker situation, and with links to Lacazette and Icardi amongst others, improvement at the top end of the pitch seems likely. I also believe that another option in attacking midfield, perhaps an Antoine Griezmann (a person I thought we should’ve signed when Mata left) would be an important addition to give us further quality options in attacking midfield. Whilst it’d be nice to see RLC introduced as a Mikel replacement, you can’t help but feel that maybe a further option in midfield might be worthwhile in order to ensure there isn’t a big gap in quality between starter and sub. A home-grown, back-up keeper will probably also be signed. With our rivals likely to spend big to try and correct the balance of power shift from Manchester to London, we’ll have to ensure that we strengthen suitably to ensure we do a better job of defending the title than City have managed this season.

Shifting back towards the present though with the important thing now being ensuring we finish the season strongly and give a good sign off to the season. I’d rather we didn’t lose all the final 3 games, and I imagine Mourinho wouldn’t want to lose them either, so a decent strength team should be played where possible, with game time afforded to those who’ve not played masses of football, like Cech, Filipe Luis, Cuadrado as well as getting some youth players some minutes in game scenarios like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Ake, Brown, Solanke, etc.

It may not have been a vintage Premier League season that has been oozing with quality, for which we can blame our rivals. The 6-3 victory over Everton was one of the most entertaining matches of the season, and Schurrle’s goal against Burnley was a thing of absolute beauty. We can celebrate now as all the hard work and stress of a long season is put behind us, and we shall enjoy our guards of honour and being called The Champions for at least a year.

We were only behind for 171 minutes this season, and we only suffered two defeats. Simply the best. We are the Champions. The Champions of England.