Chelsea fans decide which players they like or don’t like, and then find reasons to praise or criticize them accordingly. As the saying goes, if not for their double standards they would have no standards at all.
A significant chunk of the Chelsea fan base hates certain players. When these fans give their reasons for the hate, they almost make sense, until you realise some other players are loved for the exact same reasons. Chelsea fans are very quick to praise opposition players and even quicker to take the Blues to the slaughter.
One instance is the Mohamed Salah – Eden Hazard non-debate. Most Chelsea fans who pick Hazard over Salah (not that I’d expect them to select otherwise) do so because, while Salah is clearly a better goal scorer, Hazard contributes more in terms of chance creation, dribbles, take ons and the rest. Therefore, Chelsea fans appear to value such stats.
That makes it completely stunning to see Willian hated because he does not score or assist as often as those same fans would like, despite him contributing almost as much in terms of support, play off the ball and work rate.
Hazard has only created four more big chances than Willian. This is not to say Willian is equal to Eden Hazard in overall quality. But it highlights how fans carefully pick any reason to justify their hate, even when it contradicts their other closely held opinions.
None of Willian, Eden Hazard or Mohamed Salah are actual strikers, but some people make everything revolve around their goal-scoring. Others say Hazard’s job is not to score, but to create the plays. This lets them excuse Hazard for not scoring as much as others because of everything else he brings to the table. But they do not apply the same balance to other similarly situated players.
Another glaring contradiction arises when Gonzalo Higuain is compared with Alvaro Morata. Morata was given all kinds of “criticism,” abuse and just about everything else a hated player can absorb. This was because a majority of fans were convinced Morata’s misses cost Chelsea any number of trophies. They were irritated by Morata’s poor finishing, and decided he needed to go for Chelsea to move forward.
These fans did not realise that missing a chance is a mixture of good and bad. If a player misses a chance, there at least was a chance to be missed in the first place.
Those fans felt sweet relief and full joy when Morata went to Atletico Madrid on loan. They were ready for Chelsea to start dumping teams in 6-0 wins.
But a lot of viewers would have noticed how Morata knew how to get himself in one-on-one situations. With better finishing, he would have produced more goals (obviously). Morata was almost the perfect striker to play against an offside trap because he knew how to hang at the defenders’ shoulder and peel away at just the right time, most of the time.
Since Higuain arrived at SW6, he has only scored against two teams. One of them has already been relegated – in March. March. The other will be relegated after their next loss, perhaps later this week.
While fans demanded Morata’s head for missing sitters, Higuain is not getting the same treatment. Of course, the anti-Morata / pro-Higuain crowd blames every other player for Higuain’s subpar (to put it mildly) performances.
Not only is Higuain exempt from the same unnecessarily hostile treatment, guess what he is being praised for? You guessed right! His ability to get into goalscoring positions.
Many fans had praised Higuain even before he arrived, and had berated other fans who doubted his (ahem) goalscoring prowess. With Higuain failing, rather than address the elephant in the room, they have resorted to highlighting his non-scoring attributes as the reason Chelsea should be happy with him. If only the Blues had a striker who frequently moved into good goal-scoring positions. Oh wait, they loaned him to Atletico Madrid.
Again, this is not to say Alvaro Morata is a better striker than Gonzalo Higuain. It simply screams for the need to stick to the grading scheme, rather than manipulate it to justify love for certain players and hate for the rest.
And just because why not, let’s throw in the Emerson and Marcos Alonso non-debate. A good portion of fans lament that, while Alonso may be better as a wingback, he is poor defensively. Supposedly, this irks them the most about his place in the starting XI. They are hardly interested in what Alonso has to offer in the final third, and would rather dismiss him for his “defensive shortcomings.”
This is makes it rather surprising, then, how readily they accept a worse defender in Emerson on the grounds he offers slightly more in the final third*. Those same fans cry for Emerson to start because he “links up well with Hazard” and he “offers more going forward.” They crucially never mention how Emerson cannot defend at a Premier League level, because that would undercut their claims to being intensely bothered by Alonso’s perceived defensive deficiencies.
I am very sensitive when it comes to double standards, and Chelsea fans apply more than their share, all too easily and all too frequently.
Fans often like to say they are criticising player performances, when some of them only look for anything and everything to solidify their bias toward certain players.
Make up your mind. You either want direct goal involvement from the forwards or you don’t. You either want a goal-scoring striker or you don’t. A defender who can defend, or one deserving of some leeway for what he does up-field. But we’re done using different grading schemes for and against students in the same exam.
*I don’t agree that Emerson offers more in the final third. Marcos Alonso offers more on both sides of the ball, but that is matter for another day.