A Living Nightmare: What’s Happened To Chelsea FC?
Chelsea have been struggling in this campaign, but what the hell has happened?
It felt like a nightmare, a living nightmare.
As Graziano Pelle slammed in Southampton’s third to seal another humiliating and painful defeat for Chelsea FC I couldn’t believe my eyes. Floods of people were leaving their seats around me and storming out with 15 minutes to go. (I will get back to that one later.)
It seems like a simple question doesn’t it? What’s happened to Chelsea? The answer, however, seems to be harder than Algebra. This team who had last season swept aside the competition and dominated the toughest league in the world, this team who had looked ruthless and hungry from August to May now seem to have lost it all.
The lack of heart and fight from some of those Chelsea players is the hardest thing. There are suggestions that Jose Mourinho is losing the dressing room, which seems to be the go-to explanation for any team in bad form. Yesterday’s performance, though, would’ve only lit fuel to an increasing fire. Or a burning tree that’s in a forest. Each week it seems that the fire grows bigger and spreads to a new tree within that forest. You start to worry that this fire has got out of hand.
Let’s start with Branislav Ivanovic. I’ve never seen a player cost us so many goals, put in so many bad performances and keep his place. You could have said that it was time for him to be dropped after Swansea, when Jefferson Montero destroyed him on the opening day. I thought it was time at West Brom when he was at fault for both goals, then a week later when Yannick Bolasie did the same. That was 7 games ago and the idea that he is still starting is a disgrace.
I have to ask Jose, what do you see in Ivanovic that we don’t? Why are you blindly putting faith in a player that is costing us goal after goal, game after game? If it’s his way of making a point then I’m sorry Jose I don’t get it. Did we just pay Augsburg a cheeky £20m for the fun of it? Are we going to continue to fall deeper down this rabbit hole and leave Abdul Baba Rahman on the bench? So many questions…
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Let’s move onto Cesc Fabregas and the substitutions.
Fabregas for me was once again slow, ineffectual and cost us the third goal. You cannot argue that Ruben Loftus-Cheek could not have improved on that lazy excuse for a performance. The reason I correlate Fabregas and the substitutions yesterday is because by some horrific miracle, he stayed on for 90 minutes.
Alarm bells started ringing when Willian was taken off for Pedro. I didn’t even stand up to clap. There were signs of frustration from the crowd at the decision, simply because Willian was our best player. That free kick was world class and he seemed like the only one on his game.
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The first switch that Jose made could be justified as Ramires was looking reckless. However, the three obvious half-time subs in my opinion were Baba for Ivanovic, Loftus-Cheek for Fabregas and Nemanja Matic for Ramires.The Blues boss made one of them.
Bringing on Matic, only to take him off nearly 30 minutes later was when I feared for Jose’s sanity. He subsequently claimed that he needed a goal and didn’t want to take off Oscar. That for me is a very weak excuse given that he could have easily kept Matic on, put Oscar in CM and taken off Fabregas. This was when certain fans turned on Mourinho.
Do I need to analyse Southampton’s goals? Each one appeared to be as shocking as the next or, in Southampton’s case, as easy as the next. All three looked to be choreographed, like an example in training of how NOT TO DEFEND!
I want warriors and fighters on that pitch who will do anything to win. The fight within that dressing room has disappeared and it’s both appalling and gut wrenching to watch players of that ability put in such little effort and fold so easily. I don’t know who took the field yesterday because they weren’t Chelsea players.
I almost forgot to mention the attack although you can’t really blame me because there wasn’t one yesterday.
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Eden Hazard, Oscar, Radamel Falcao and Pedro were all shadows of their former selves. Our tactic of lumping the ball up to Falcao was just laughable. Had the players forgotten who was up front? It wasn’t Diego Costa. You would have expected players with the awareness of Fabregas and Oscar to realise that trying to get Falcao to win a header against Jose Fonte and Virgil Van Dyke was not the best idea. They did not and the Blues suffered.
Now it’s time to address the fans.
I don’t know who took the field yesterday because they weren’t Chelsea players
What seriously annoyed me were the floods who left after the third goal went in. There were still 15 minutes to go. What are you doing? You are a supporter, not a spectator. If you love the club, you stay and support no matter what the circumstances. I stayed until full time and sung “CHELSEA WE LOVE YOU” over and over in pure affection for my club. It’s disgraceful how quickly people left!
So where do we go from here?
While the future looks very grim, sacking Mourinho would make matters worse. We need to get behind our manager and the team. Calling for his removal is delusional. How fickle are some? Think of what this man has done for the club, the great days that he has brought us, the trophies. He only won us the league 5 months ago.
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Jose must be given the time to fix the problems and recover this campaign. Fortunately, such dissent seems confined to Twitter so far but the negative reaction to Jose’s subs (which was justified) and the fire drill response from many after the third Saints goal leaves me concerned.
The most irritating thing is how simple the changes are. The obvious ones are Ivanovic and Fabregas. You bring in Baba to LB and move Azpilicueta to his favoured RB position. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, meanwhile, must start against Aston Villa! Fabregas should be dropped and Ruben should be given the chance he rightly deserves. If he doesn’t get it now, he never will.
We have to promote youth at this club and Loftus-Cheek provides the quality that the team has been lacking. He can dominate midfield and powerfully run box to box. It is a crime not to play him.
I’ll always stick behind our club and our manager because I’m a Chelsea fan and it’s all I can do. However, matters must improve, too many weekends have been ruined!
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