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Chelsea no longer have any bogey teams – they just have themselves

By Barrett Rouen

BARCELONA, SPAIN - MARCH 13: Antonio Conte, Manager of Chelsea walks across the pitch during a Chelsea training session on the eve of their UEFA Champions League round of 16 match against FC Barcelona at Nou Camp on March 13, 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)
BARCELONA, SPAIN - MARCH 13: Antonio Conte, Manager of Chelsea walks across the pitch during a Chelsea training session on the eve of their UEFA Champions League round of 16 match against FC Barcelona at Nou Camp on March 13, 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images) /
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Chelsea have no bogey teams anymore.  They’re not good enough to have that one team who can beat them against the run of their season.

When an excellent team has problems with a particular club, that club can often become a bogey team.  For Manchester City it’s Liverpool. For Manchester United it’s anybody in the bottom half. For Chelsea it used to be Newcastle. Now it’s everybody.

Chelsea are so inconsistent that it doesn’t matter how the last game was or who they are playing. Every single game is a crap shoot as to how things will go. It’s not just good teams the Blues have trouble with. It’s the mediocre and bad teams, too.

This team and set of players need to take a serious look at themselves in the mirror and decide who it is they want to be.

One of the biggest issues Chelsea are going to have is the team needs to make major changes. But because they are outside the Champions League many of the players they need to buy to make those change will be unavailable to them.

The Robert Lewandowski’s, Isco’s, Kylian Mbappe’s, Paulo Dybala’s and Kalidou Koulibaly’s are not available to teams that cannot even consistently qualify for the Champions League. The Blues need players of that quality, both in terms of talent and professionalism. But without the Champions League going on two of the last three seasons, they simply will not be able to attract them.

Sadly, though, they won’t take the other option: integrate youth and use them to build up the squad. So they won’t be able to add anyone good enough, and they’ll continue with their strange aversion to growing them from within.

Next: Chelsea vs. Soton showed the importance of matching the manager to the task

Chelsea needs a lot of work. For some reason they are entirely inept when it comes to actually doing what they need to accomplish their goals. It is a peculiar state to be in. It is the sort of situations we used to associate with the sort of teams who used to be Chelsea’s bogey teams. Now, they are just their competition.

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