Man United performance proves Chelsea can still win the Premier League
Chelsea’s defensive draw against Manchester United proved it can still win the Premier League despite stuttering from the start.
Two scoreless stalemates in quick succession can be dangerous for a manager. They point to bluntness in attack, a lack of ideas and possibly a lack of ambition. Unless, of course, you’re Frank Lampard’s Chelsea. If you’re Lampard’s Blues, it points to a growing maturity, an admirable priority-shift and improving title ambitions.
Make no mistake about it, Saturday’s bore-draw in the unrelenting Old Trafford rain was as boring as they come, impressively more so than the bone-dry, mind-numbing display against Sevilla midweek. However, it was exactly what was required from the Blues in the face of a side which runs decidedly hot and cold, hot off the trail of a defiant victory away at last season’s Champions League finalists, Paris Saint-Germain. When you add in the correlation between United with space to counter and United without it, this becomes acutely explicit.
Naturally, Lampard needed no reminding of this fact, given the memories of his very first competitive game in charge of Chelsea way back in August of 2019. Some four-goal ghosts needed to be exorcised and exorcised they were, with stubborn aplomb. On that day, the Blues were pretty impressive going forward in pockets of play, and drastically naive in every moment that mattered. As Timothee Chalamet’s character in ‘Call Me By Your Name’ so eloquently informed us, you can boast a commendable breadth of knowledge without having the faintest idea about the things that matter.
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That is what Lampard has proved in the last week. He knows when push comes to shove, defense is the true discerner of championship credentials—or as other masters of eloquence would say: “defense wins championships.” Sometimes, it really is as simple as that. Just look at the reaction in Liverpool—despite that array of attacking talent—to the injury of Virgil van Dijk (thoughts and prayers).
That feels like as good a precursor as any to segue onto the punchline of this piece—Chelsea’s title ambitions and why they’re very much still alive. Now, depending on your preseason disposition, that sentence may have been ludicrous back in September, let alone with all the awareness of inconsistencies that come with living in late October. Maybe you’re right, maybe you were right back then, but I would argue that, despite sitting ninth (with the chance of worse when all games in hand have been handled), the Blues are greater title contenders now than they were at the start of the season. That’s because, even if that attacking possibility has yet to be properly harvested, the major problem areas of yore seem to have been fixed and those problem areas were always at the back.
Edouard Mendy is still finding his way, yet he still looks an excellent find. Ditto for Thiago Silva, if not in the finding of his talent then in the assurance that he would find his footing (excuse the pun) in the Premier League. Both were standouts on Saturday, answering every call placed upon them. Silva in particular seemed aided by the cushioning cover that the 3-4-3 formation afforded him, and that could be the blueprint Lampard adheres to in games he feels require a more compact touch. Having a flexible tactical repertoire to lean on is a key step on the road to trophy-garnering.
Sure, you may lament the coinciding of this recent defensive shift with a net-busting nadir, but a compromise had to be made for the greater good going forward. Thanks to this and the peculiar particulars of this Premier League season—and, yes, the aforementioned absence of van Dijk (rest in rehabilitative power, oh mighty one, ad infinitum)—an unlikely title could still be in reach.
Next. Chelsea should use the next run of games not to experiment, but to test. dark
Of course, at this rate, the same could be said of Everton, Aston Villa, Tottenham, Liverpool, Leicester and Leeds, but that doesn’t make it any less true. In this year of all years, the race is open. Hay Liga and, in the case of Stamford Bridge, hay un caballo oscuro chomping on the hay of its latest clean sheet conquests.