Chelsea being tired in January is a tired excuse for a challenging club

Chelsea is a big club that competes on all fronts. As a result, the club built a deep bench capable of competing on all fronts. It should come as a surprise to exactly no one that the Blues are likely going to play 60 games or more this season and that the run between December and January will be the worst of it.

Yes, Covid and injuries have hit the club hard this season. But that is hardly an excuse when making just three changes between the Everton and Wolves game while asking the Wolves game to be postponed. That is hardly an excuse when Andreas Christensen, Hakim Ziyech, Mateo Kovacic, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Timo Werner, Christian Pulisic, and Romelu Lukaku all start against a non league side at home in the cup or when Kai Havertz is among the subs. That is hardly an excuse when Romelu Lukaku, Antonio Rudiger, and Cesar Azpilicueta have started five of the six games in January or Mason Mount, Marcos Alonso, and Hakim Ziyech four of the six. Some may say there are no alternatives due to the injuries and Covid, but there is a difference between no alternatives and choosing not to use the alternatives.

One of the defining bits of information in the Brighton post game was how many more games Chelsea has played compared to Brighton, as if this alone is supposed to be a shocking stat that explains the absolutely putrid display by the Blues. It should come as no surprise that Chelsea, a team in Champions League and every domestic cup, will have played more games than Brighton, a team with just the FA Cup to occupy them outside of the Premier League.

Postponed games? Who cares? People are loving a complaint about Chelsea games not being postponed but what seems to be missing from that analysis is that those games don’t go away. They just get moved to an even more inopportune time. If you think Chelsea is tired playing three games a week in December and January, just wait until you see how Arsenal or Tottenham cope in March and April as they play catch up. Postponing games is not a solution to fatigue, it is merely trading fatigue now for worse fatigue later. It’s a loan with interest.

Coaches from other leagues come to the Premier League and often have these complaints. England has a winter break, of sorts, now. But that break comes after a huge amount of winter games whereas elsewhere it comes before. Furthermore, other leagues don’t have two separate domestic cups to contend with. But probably more importantly than all of that is Tuchel shouldn’t be surprised by the fatigue.

Tuchel arrived last year and one of the first things he did, besides change the formation, was bring in players from the cold. Players that had played little under Frank Lampard were fresh while those Lampard relied on were rested for the first few weeks of Tuchel’s tenure. This surely helped the initial run of form under the new manager, but apparently the lesson then has been lost now.

And again, none of this should really matter. This is the type of season Chelsea is expected to go through. The winter slog seems to surprise each Chelsea manager anew as Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp complain in their own ways while still getting their business done.

Tiredness is real, but it can’t be an excuse for performances like that against Brighton. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen through a series of poor decisions. Chelsea may be hit hard by injuries and Covid, but those poor decisions aren’t helping the fatigue. And if Chelsea wants to be a club competing on all fronts, the last thing the Blues or anyone involved should do is complain about the responsibility that brings.