Premier League Hangover: Chelsea Slump as Manchester City Soar

Alex DunnAug 16, 2015

The demeanor of the two managers was telling.

Manuel Pellegrini is usually so reserved he resembles a table at Noma. In normal circumstances, Brian Kidd could get creative with a firework in the dugout and the Chilean wouldn’t look up. And yet here, at the final whistle of Manchester City’s 3-0 demolition job on Chelsea, he was positively revelling. Fists were pumped, no less, as his bete noire, Jose Mourinho, was a model of insouciance in comparison.

The Portuguese’s touchline theatrics, long since a module at RADA, were as understated as his team’s performance was underwhelming. In his post-match comments there was at least a little dash of brio in evidence as he bristled to reporters about a "fake result." But in private quarters Mourinho will concede his Chelsea players look a pale imitation of the collective that sauntered to the title last term.

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Like dogs resembling their owners, some of Mourinho’s men are aping their master at the minute: older, angrier, greyer, slower, tetchier.

Make no mistake: This has been a wretched start to the season. Mourinho has already been at pains to point out that Chelsea will find it much harder to retain the title than it was to win it. And on Sunday’s showing, his words of caution may have prescience come May.

The absence of Eva Carneiro from Chelsea’s bench at the City of Manchester Stadium was an unnecessary, distracting subplot. Yet, it was all of Mourinho’s design. A man who chooses his words and actions with Pinteresque precision has been badly off-key in his handling of what should have been a non-event. And whilst the two aren’t necessarily intertwined, his team looks similarly out of sorts.

Take nothing away from Manchester City, though. As reinvigorated as Chelsea look regressed, in just two performances the usurped champions have reasserted themselves as title favourites. Pellegrini, after endearingly letting his guard down, reverted back to type post-game as he warned against drawing premature conclusions.

"Nothing is significant until the end of the season,” Pellegrini said, via Jamie Jackson of the Guardian.

“We were in the same position in January but lost by eight points at the end. The gap is important but we are just starting and not sending a message.”

That won’t stop headline writers suggesting otherwise.

City set the tone of the contest within 30 seconds. The effervescent David Silva turned past Cesc Fabregas with the ease of a speedboat overtaking an oil tanker before releasing Sergio Aguero with a slide-rule pass that deserved its own National Trust plaque such was its outstanding natural beauty.

Asmir Begovic produced the first of three fine first-half saves in his personal duel with Aguero, but just past the half-hour mark the Argentine’s precision finish finally beat him after Gary Cahill swallowed a dummy that belonged in a Bloomingdale’s window.

Manchester City were rampant as Chelsea had no response.

Rui Vieira/Associated Press/Associated Press

Raheem Sterling's acquisition, when coupled with Jesus Navas’ inclination to hug the opposite flank on the right, gives City a natural width that stretches opposition and in turn creates greater pockets of space in central areas. With Chelsea’s full-backs pulled wider, Silva, Aguero and Yaya Toure were left to maraud into gaping lines between a back four that just two games in looks set for an overhaul.

If Branislav Ivanovic gets another roasting this season he’ll automatically qualify for a mobility scooter, while Mourinho’s decision to hook John Terry for the first time in 177 appearances will likely be one of the season’s most oft-repeated statistics.

Mourinho told reporters he replaced Terry with Kurt Zouma because he wanted his fastest defender on the pitch, which is a bit like a wife telling her husband not to worry as she just fancies someone less ugly.

Terry’s withdrawal was a stark message to Roman Abramovich: Get the chequebook out.

Chelsea allowed Swansea 17 shots last week at Stamford Bridge; by half-time City had trained their sights on Begovic’s goal a further nine times. Ivanovic has not gone from one of the league’s most distinguished defenders to an accident waiting to happen overnight. But the Serbian is struggling badly and could be taken out of the firing line sooner than either new signing Abdul Baba Rahman or Mourinho may have anticipated.

Chelsea were improved in the second half. But to suggest they were the better side, as Mourinho did, is somewhat fanciful as they not only conceded a further two goals but did not manage a shot on target themselves until the 70th minute.

It was Ivanovic who let Vincent Kompany outmuscle him at a set piece to score a carbon copy of the goal City’s skipper netted at West Brom, before he lost the ball in the build-up to Fernandinho's crisply struck cherry-on-the-cake third for the home side.

All over the field Chelsea looked rattled. Fernandinho was fortunate not to receive a red card for a stray elbow that left Diego Costa bloodied and bandaged (albeit by City staff, after Chelsea were ironically left short of medical practitioners as Cahill was simultaneously being seen to). But the reaction of the Spain international was symptomatic of his own preoccupations of late.

Costa seems as interested in scrapping as he does scoring since returning from hamstring troubles—the Premier League’s Jake LaMotta, at war with the world.

Fabregas looks labored and lacks the defensive nous to play in a deeper role alongside Nemanja Matic, whilst Eden Hazard attempted just two dribbles and put in just one cross. Manchester City left-back Aleksandar Kolarov, in comparison, attempted 11 crosses, per Squawka.

A week into a new season is no time to write off any side, let alone one managed by Mourinho, but something is amiss at Chelsea at present. Of that, there is little doubt.

Reasons to be cheerful…none

Sunderland’s favourite son, the indomitable Len Shackleton, dedicated a chapter of his autobiography to the "The Average Director's Knowledge of Football." It consisted of a single blank page. If "The Clown Prince of Soccer" were still around today, an updated memoir could use the same gag for a segment titled "Reasons for Sunderland fans to be Optimistic."

In an age when the minutiae of football is dissected to the point that it can only be a matter of time before heat maps are used to determine the average temperature of tea served in Premier League grounds, the term "crisis" tends to be used to describe anything from a fallout between a manager and club doctor to a shortage of matchday Twix.

And yet, here we are, just two games into a new season, and what is going on at Sunderland feels like a bona fide crisis. On the back of conceding four on the opening day at Leicester, Saturday’s 3-1 slump at the Stadium of Light to Norwich led manager Dick Advocaat to summon his team to an emergency meeting the following day.

Advocaat, who turns 68 in September, went against his wife’s wishes over the summer when he performed a U-turn on his decision to retire, to instead agree to another year in the North East. After what has been a miserable fortnight, one suspects Mrs Advocaat would still refer to her hubby by his forename even if he’d been christened otherwise.

The Dutchman certainly cut a disconsolate figure in his post-match press briefings.

These are dark times for Dick Advocaat and Sunderland.

Scott Heppell/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

“Even this squad must be good enough to get a better result against Norwich,” Advocaat said, as per the Guardian to the assembled journalists, who each in turn underlined "even" in their notes.

He continued:

"
There is something wrong, that’s quite simple. I have an idea about it, but tomorrow we will have a meeting and they can talk and I will talk.
What was so wrong was I saw players—and I don’t want to mention names, it was the whole team, with the exception of one or two players—and they did things that I don’t expect from a player at this level. I have to know why that can happen because it’s really strange for me. You can play badly, but not even knowing what to do is even worse. I’m really shocked.
"

Sunderland were indeed truly shocking, but should Advocaat be shocked? Rewind seven days, and his appraisal of the Leicester defeat was thus, per Louise Taylor of the Guardian: “I was shocked ... If you think that you can play that way, you have no chance at all. If there is no aggression in the team to get the ball, it will be very difficult for us.”

The club’s supporters weren’t shocked. Resigned, certainly, but it takes more than abjectness to shock those who frequent a ground that has become so obliging it’s a surprise the centre circle hasn’t been dug out to accommodate a Jacuzzi for the away team.

In the past two seasons combined, Sunderland have won a total of nine league games at the somewhat optimistically named Stadium of Light. The sight of supporters streaming out of the home exit as if a fire alarm had sounded midway through the second half is not unfamiliar.

And who can blame them?

Sunderland is a club stuck on a treadmill of mediocrity, a community club without any kind of discernible identity. As per George Caulkin's investigations in the Times, Sunderland have the eighth-highest wage bill in the division. Sixty-seven per cent of their turnover, some £67 million, goes on paying their players’ wages.

If owner Ellis Short is indeed watching, then one suspects it will be with his hands over his eyes and with a large drink at the ready.

Saluting Ranieri

When Leicester City appointed Claudio Ranieri in the summer, the bookies had their new favourite for the manager sack race. Gary Lineker summed up the prevailing mood when he tweeted: "Claudio Ranieri? Really? Amazing how the same old names keep getting a go on the managerial merry-go-round."

With the Italian having managed 14 clubs across five countries in a career that has spanned 29 years, it was a fair assumption to make that Ranieri might not prove the long-term solution for Leicester.

He still might not, but on the back of two outstanding performances that have seen Leicester glean six points and score six goals in the process, along with playing some expansive football to boot, it seems churlish not to applaud Ranieri’s opening efforts.

As affable as his predecessor was angry, Ranieri has resisted indulging in his predilection to over-engineer solutions to problems only he can see and has instead made only subtle changes. In an environment filled with testosterone, his acceptance that Nigel Pearson did a pretty fine job before him is thoroughly refreshing.

On the Wayne?