Chelsea’s loss to Manchester City derailed a potentially delightful post about the importance of the wing-back in modern football, and how adaptable and intelligent players like Cesar Azpilicueta should be the spine of any modern football team.
Chelsea delivered an utter disgrace of a performance against Manchester City. Chelsea played some of the worst football of their season on Saturday. Choose your rationale: The scheduling issues they had to deal with. Antonio Conte’s refusal to stop the drama surrounding Chelsea. Injuries resulted in the Blues being in shambles.
Manchester City were missing two superstar players this weekend. Yet they looked like a team that would pick Chelsea up from school and tuck them in with a bottle of warm milk. It was men against boys.
The Chelsea midfield still has not gained any sort of fluidity. N’Golo Kante is a hard worker, but his efforts are minimized by his not having a good relationship with his midfield partners.
Tiemoue Bakayoko takes an almost strange amount of time on the ball. Players do not need more than three touches almost ever. Especially in the middle of the park. Control it, move it, pass it. That should be the extent of ball-handling as a central midfielder. Top quality players do it in one or two touches. Bakayoko wastes more time than people in line for the new Apple product.
Must Read: Manchester City showed the limitations of Chelsea's starting XI in a 3-5-2
Cesc Fabregas is Cesc Fabregas: a player Barcelona had and gave up on twice. They had him and were able to observe him closely two times over, and decided that he was not what they needed moving forward.
Barcelona are a lot of things as a football club. But they have not made it to where they are by being poor talent evaluators. For every spectacular game Fabregas has he has five poor ones. When his defenders and other people will realize this… I don’t know. But he is not the sort of player Chelsea can depend on.
Antonio Conte is a phenomenal manager, but there is a slight issue in his avoidance to commit to Chelsea. He has, in a strange way, demanded commitment from Chelsea players – ousting Diego Costa for not having that – and yet not set the example himself.
Conte should sign a five-year deal and be done with it. Players will not commit to a plan if they can not commit to a manager. Conte should cut out all the dramatics and commit. He can move back to Italy at some point, but the job in west London is far from done.
Next: Antonio Conte still does not see Michy Batshuayi as Chelsea's backup striker
Chelsea are still not established – again – under a manager in his second season. Conte is hindering his own skill set and legacy with this sort of public dilly-dallying.