Chelsea’s 2-0 victory over Nottingham Forest wasn’t as convincing as one would have liked against a Championship side at home, but it does wrap up an overall decent holiday period for the Blues.
If you told me that, in the course of a couple weeks, Chelsea would beat both Tottenham and Arsenal, I’d probably accept anything else you offered me to pay for it. Of course, tempering those victories with poor losses to Southampton and Bournemouth and a draw against Brighton would be pretty much the extent of what I could take.
Over that stretch the Blues showed who they really are, and that’s OK. This is not the best team in the Premier League, but they are certainly better than Tottenham and Arsenal. Maybe that’s not saying much, considering both of those sides are already on their second manager of the season and we are only six days into January, but it’s at least what the Blues deserve.
These Blues are deeply talented and the sky is the ceiling for them, but professional football is about so much more than that. They’ll need to learn if they’re to succeed.
Chelsea lost those seemingly “easy” games to professional sides who played them properly. They remained organized, didn’t get rattled, and, in the end, won matches against a young and at times ill-disciplined and poorly organized Blues side.
The good news is we have seen how good this Chelsea side can be. What’s even better is that we know where they can improve.
I prattle on like a drunk about the yesteryears when it comes to the defense, but they at least kept a clean sheet against Forrest.
Was it a Championship team? Yes. Were they saved by VAR for two situations a real defense simply wouldn’t have let happen in the first place? Yes.
But did a young group of three players (with the ever regressing Emerson beside them) with years of experience playing together in the academy also look better and more cohesive together than Chelsea’s defense has looked at any point so far this season? Yes.
So there’s always positives. We need to be realistic, but a win should always be counted as just that and remembered fondly.
During this period Chelsea haven’t punched above their weight so much as shown exactly who they are.
What makes the current Liverpool side so special is not just that they win games and are entertaining. They’re also ruthless and dependable. Though they play good football and look like they’ll win the title months in advance, they have the solidity that all strong teams have.
Chelsea inarguably lack that. They’re world beaters on some days and then look like they deserve a season in the Championship at others.
This has them in fourth place by a mild margin. The curious thing will be to see how they handle January. Now there’s finally a full set of professional circumstances for the young players to deal with and Frank Lampard will have options.
We can only hope that the quality of Chelsea’s transfer business improves because there’s no way to make up for how poor it has been in recent years. It is the reason why the squad fails spectacularly every other year and why the club lost close to £100 million last season.
They target players for the wrong reasons too often, and use little to no long term judgment when looking at players’ character.
They completely ignore long term projections of the squad as not only a sporting entity but a human unit.
Frank Lampard has a handle on things and he has shown massive improvement as a manager. If there’s still one thing at Chelsea that’s worth betting on, it’s Super Frank. The rest, if he’s allowed to do his job, will sort itself out.
Chelsea are exactly where they should be and patience is still the most necessary thing.