Chelsea were linked this week with veteran defender Diego Godin. If the Blues were to buy a highly-experienced, world-class centerback, which current Blue would have to make way?
Frank Lampard has had over a month now to watch and rewatch every game and training session of the 2019/20 season. It might not have been enough for him to decide who is Chelsea’s best centerback pair. If the Blues buy a top defender this summer, they will need to sell one of the current four. Our writers almost reach a consensus.
1. Antonio Rudiger (Abhishek Pancholi)
Frank Lampard will sign a senior centerback whenever the transfer window opens. It could be the battle-hardened veteran Diego Godin, or someone else who knows how to organize a defence. And whether he likes it or not, Antonio Rudiger will be the one who will find himself out of the team.
The German international has his moments when he is a colossus in defence, but they are usually bookended by a loss of concentration or an error in judgment.
We’ve been here before, with David Luiz and his circus clown act.
And although Rudiger is not quite stepping on rakes yet, the all-too-frequent mistakes over the course of this season have steadily chipped away at his reliability and his reputation. With just two years left on his contract, it might be time to say Auf Wiedersehen.
With the arrival of Godin (or An Other), Rudiger should be moved on to a team more suited to his current level, which is still quite good, but maybe not good enough for Chelsea.
The younger centerbacks would get a defensive partner who can not only handle the organizational responsibilities but also mentor, calm and guide them when the going gets tough. You know it makes sense.
2. Andreas Christensen (Hugo Amaya)
Andreas Christensen should be the one to make way for a new centerback. Although Christensen is a player who waited for his turn and deserves play time at the moment, he lacks physicality. Sure, he is very good at reading plays, and being at the right place at the right time. But unless he bulks up a little more, his time at Chelsea won’t last too long.
Tracking back to last season, Christensen was pushed around too often and too easily. There are certain moments in the life of a defender where it doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t take the ball away from a player, or even take a player off the ball. This has been Christensen’s curse.
Further, he lacks the ferocity to go after every challenge. Again, he does a good job at blocking, intercepting and reading spaces. But when it comes down to a hard challenge, he is not the one who usually makes it.
This raises a second downside to his game: if he missed the opportunity to read a play on time, what’s next? Yes, technical and tactical abilities are always important, but they can fail. And, when they do, all that’s left is brute force, which he lacks.
Although many, including me, like him, he should make way for a new centerback.
3. Antonio Rudiger (Varun Dani)
If Chelsea were to go all out and get a world class centre back in the summer, selecting the player to be sold is but a process of elimination.
The safest of the lot is undoubtedly Fikayo Tomori. He has shown flashes of his potential and has the tag of “one of our own” with him. He’ll at worst be loaned out, but no sale anytime soon.
Speaking of academy products, Andreas Christensen is yet another Cobham graduate whose career has been up and down. While he has had some shaky spells, unlike Tomori, he has shown that he can put in consistently measured performances over a prolonged period of time and has done just enough to get a final year to prove himself.
Chelsea’s most defensive defender this season has been Kurt Zouma, who is massively underrated and under-appreciated at Stamford Bridge. The Frenchman is a very old school, defense-first kind of player who is strong in the air and hard on the tackle. While he has been shaky on the ball at times, with the right partner (like John Terry in the past) he can be the perfect player to do all the dirty work for the team.
That leaves us with Antonio Rudiger, the player perceived to be the leader of the current defense.
Rudiger is not as calm on the ball as Christensen, nor as defensively imperious as Zouma and definitely not as young or English as Tomori. His role in the squad is that of a world class defender, which he is not, so he would make way for someone who is.