Chelsea: The Problems

The pressure is on. A few bad results for Chelsea and now the wisdom of their manager, Luiz Phiipe Scolari, is under serious scrutiny. In the league, they've failed to capitalize on several occasions after their rivals dropped seemingly precious points. They've qualified for the knockout stages in Europe but in a much less convincing fashion than expected, considering their scintillating form domestically coupled with a 4-0 thrashing over Bordeaux in their initial European Champions League match.

For me, the first signs of a potential problem was when they surprisingly could only draw 1-1 at home against a Manchester United struggling for form back in late September. Since that match, Chelsea have had three other big tests—Arsenal, Liverpool, Roma—where they've also underachieved. And now, more recently it's starting to affect their performances against so called "lesser teams" as well, managing to only draw against West Ham, Everton, Southend, and Fulham.

DEFENSIVE WORRIES

I first expressed my concerns after the draw against United, where I mentioned observations relating to their defence and attack. One of the things that surprised me was how sloppy Chelsea's defense were at times against United. Sloppy. A term that I don't remember associating with Chelsea's defense under Mourinho's era.

Especially aerially, where they used to dominate, Chelsea seemed fragile; unorganised. That was only one match but it seems to have been a recurring feature in their matches ever since. Watching their games, there are definitely more panic situations, where they scramble to get the ball clear, than there used to be. In their most recent match, against Southend in the F.A. Cup, they again conceded a goal after first heading a poor "clearance" (it went backwards TOWARDS goal) and then allowed the goalscorer to head the ball completely unchallenged, despite being surrounded by three Chelsea players. 

Whilst the attacking side of Chelsea has been brilliant so far, the more hesitant and uneasy they feel at the back, the more that the attacking side of the game will diminish in fear of conceding a goal, like the one at Southend.

Chelsea have had one of the best defenses for the last few years, so why all of a sudden this season are they conceding such sloppy goals? The Terry-Carvalho partnership, which has been the bedrock of Chelsea's defence, has been severely disrupted this season so far, due to injuries to both players and is probably a very likely explanation for the defensive concerns.

However, could it also be related to the manager's prior experience? Brazil and Portugal, the two teams that Scolari managed prior to his appointment at Chelsea, arguably owe their success under his tenure more to the fact that they had an fantastic array of attacking talent than their defensive organisation. An enduring example was in the World Cup 2002 when, literally straight after kick off, the two Brazilian full backs (Roberto Carlos and Cafu) bombed straight down the wing as if they were playing in the attacking winger's position! 

This is not to suggest that Scolari doesn't value defense. From what I've read, when Scolari took over as Brazil coach his immediate agenda was to sort the Brazilian defence. So maybe he's placing the same emphasis on defense at Chelsea.

There's no way to be sure. But if he is, based on the matches they've played so far, I'm not so sure he can execute it as well as Mourinho could and did. Time will tell. I hope they do because if they could get back their defense of the last few years and couple that with the new Brazilian style attack they'd truly be a fearsome team.

THE ANELKA-DROGBA DILEMMA

Another concern I had after watching them draw against United was to do with Nicolas Anelka. 

I think it's fair to say that so far this season Anelka has exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of goals scored. But in the United match and several other big games he's been all to easily neutralized. Look closer at his goals this season and you will notice that he's been the end-point man at most of Chelsea's TEAM attacks, and his finishes have all been relatively simple. Against the bigger teams, where he's only been getting one or two half chances in a game, his finishing has been poor and arguably costly. 

Now that Drogba's returned from injury, of course, there's an interesting dilemma for Scolari. Whilst Anelka has not performed well in the big games so far, he's been doing his job of scoring goals and you can see that as his confidence grows his finishing becomes more clinical (compare his hat trick against Sunderland to his two goals against West Brom) which suggests that he has the potential to reach another level. By re-introducing Drogba to the team, Scolari brings in a striker who is, on the whole, a better striker than Anelka but risks denting Anelka's confidence and thus stunting his growth into a much better player. 

Also, by no means is the reintroduction of Drogba a guarantee for success. When a player comes back to the team from injury with the expectation to do well, he often fails to do so. Whether it's to do with the added pressure of expectation, or the fact that he's still recovering from his injury, or whether it's a change and thus disruption of the team's usual play, there's a lot that can, and often does, go wrong. Drogba certainly hasn't been at his deadliest since his return. In his last match in the FA Cup against Southend, he produced some really poor finishes that were the sign of a player far from the top of his game.

Whilst Chelsea's passing style and talented individuals means that the threat can come from anywhere, not just the strikers, in the bigger games later on in the season I'm still not sure that Anelka will be able to make the key difference. And if Drogba can't recall his best form in time, then they'll be relying on their star midfielders such as Frank Lampard to produce the goods when it really matters.  

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH

I suggested that Scolari's faith in Anelka might've costed him some matches at the expense of developing Anelka's ability, but it's not only Anelka that seems to warrant Scolari's faith and also cost Chelsea results. Some have recognised this and suggested that Deco or Ballack are the ones who deserve to be cut, but I don't agree. Whilst Ballack has been disappointing in his time at Chelsea, and Deco has somewhat faded recently, they've shown time and time again that they are world class players who can produce at the highest level. Their B game is usually on par with most players A games. Instead, I believe that it's players like Essien and Jon Obi Mikel who need to be reviewed.

Both of these players are direct replacements for the defensive midfielder/holding midfielder role once so successfully covered by Claude Makelele, who left in the summer for P.S.G.

Essien may be a controversial pick for some and, granted, has been injured all season so far. But as usual when a few results go awry people immediately look to the players who are not playing as a solution, and some believe that Essien will be the key to Chelsea's revival. But there are several reasons why I don't see Essien as the reason or a solution for Chelsea's recent struggles.

First of all, he was missing for most of the first couple of months when Chelsea were playing absolutely fantastic. In fact, the first league match they played was against Portsmouth, and they won 4-0 with Essien out of the team. The two following games were against Wigan and Tottenham where they could only scrape a 1-0 win and a 1-1 draw respectively, with Essien IN the team. The next match Essien was injured and without him in the team they started to record significant win margins again (Man City 1-3 Chelsea, Chelsea 4-0 Bordeaux, Portsmouth 0-4 Chelsea etc) which continued for around two months.

Of course Essien might've just been unlucky to play in the two matches that Chelsea could only manage a one goal win and a draw, but considering that he didn't play great in those two matches I think that the hard evidence so far points to Essien NOT being the major missing link that everyone is expecting him to be.

Second reason why I don't see Essien as the key is because he doesn't solve the two main problems I've mentioned so far, of performing in big games and plugging the defensive hole. Essien's poor performance in the Champions League Final last season was an exemplary example of how poor he can be defensively in a big game. Although he was playing as right back, it doesn't excuse the fact that he was at fault for the goal and that he was generally poor defensively. In fact, he was struggling so bad that Joe Cole, an attacking midfielder, later came into the right back position and dealt with Ronaldo far more effectively than Essien had done throughout the whole match. 

More recently though, Jon Obi Mikel was the clear culprit in Chelsea's 3-1 away defeat against Roma. Chelsea dominated play and chances in that match, and in fact played pretty well without scoring, but three mistakes by Mikel ensured that Chelsea were always on the back foot, and made it almost impossible to recover.

The first goal that they conceded in that game may have ultimately been down to miscommunication between Terry and Lampard, but it originated from a cheap freekick inside their own half that Deco was forced to concede after Mikel played a very poor return pass to him. Before that, Roma hardly managed to mount an attack as Chelsea powered several shots at Roma's keeper.

For the second goal, just as Chelsea came out of the second half looking for an equalizer, Mikel first got too easily beat by a Roma player, then as the attack swiftly progressed he got caught jogging casually whilst ball watching and didn't follow the player that he was supposed to mark (Vucinic) who went on to score the goal.  

And just as Chelsea increased the intensity of their attacks to try and give themselves a chance to get back into the game, Mikel's poor touch and slack attitude once again made him lose the ball in a dangerous position, and then after having caught up with Vucinic's run, made a rash and poorly judged attempt at a sliding tackle which missed and instead allowed Vucinic to finish the rest of his run and score under no pressure whatsoever. 

John Terry, being the captain that he is, went on to salvage a consolation goal and Drogba (not Anelka, who hardly made a significant contribution to the whole match) came close to scoring but was caught offside, but by then there was too much to do.

Before the Roma match, Chelsea had only conceded one goal in their previous NINE matches, and the three goals that Roma scored were pretty much the only three chances that they had in the entire match.

However you put it, Mikel's technical deficiency and lack of intelligence was almost entirely to blame for that defeat. Of course it's a team game, but at the top level the smallest mistakes tends to get punished and Mikel made three fatal ones.

Having said all that, I think Scolari knows this already. Like I said above he's clearly a manager who likes to nurture his players, and that means allowing them to make mistakes in order to grow; an approach which I fully respect and sort of admire.

But the more bad results they experience, the more fear will creep into their play. It soon becomes demoralizing to know that you can play so well and yet still not win. It becomes this perpetual cycle that's hard to break. And considering their recent run of form, I think that's what we're starting to see at Chelsea.