Chelsea... to Be Or Not to Be? That Is The Question!

How to define Chelsea’s season so far?…Now there is a difficult question…

Despite the obvious highlights of the current season under the new (and as yet inconclusive) management of Luiz Felipe Scolari, in the 4-0 drubbing of Portsmouth and the magnificent defeat of Aston Villa in October, Chelsea have been inconsistent and at times unpredictable.

The 1-0 home defeat to Liverpool and the 3-1 loss to Roma in Italy are two extreme examples of Chelsea being completely unable to move from a place of superiority and high amounts of possession into a winning position.

This difficulty to turn possession into goals and scoring opportunities could possibly be to do with the lack of ability that the majority of Chelsea wingers have displayed in crossing the ball into the box and running past defenders. I must at this point pick out one winger in particular, that being Florent Malouda, who has at times performed at the best of his ability, in the Aston Villa game in particular and has then totally underperformed in the next game.

Certain players have also desperately underperformed this season, including (since he came back from injury) the usually reliable Deco. The fact that many important players have been injured for most of the season has also greatly affected the team, the losses of Michael Essien and Didier Drogba being two of the most significant casualties.

Despite these negatives it is obvious that Chelsea have played some delightful football so far this season and have shown the grit and tenacity to win games and have proven themselves to be serious title contenders with the supposed “flair” of Arsenal.

The first part of the season has also shown Chelsea to be extremely strong in defence, conceding only 4 goals in all games before the aforementioned defeat to Roma.  The big wins against Portsmouth, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Bordeaux have shown Chelsea to be a team able to score lots of goals whilst still keeping a clean sheet.

Frank Lampard has shown once again this season that he is still one of the best midfielders in the world and he is arguably Chelsea’s best signing this season with his new 5 year contract. John Terry has been dependably strong in defence and has continued to be the assured leader and legend of Chelsea football club, letting nothing stand in his way.

Perhaps the surprise package of the current season however, has been John Mikel Obi, who has put in consistently calm and assured performances and has shown the way he has matured in recent years into a great holding midfielder who confidently but steadily gets the job done.

The optimism from the start of the season has started to fade away after the Roma defeat and the away game against Blackburn this weekend will say a lot about how the rest of the season will go and the confidence of both the players and the fans. If the team can maintain the consistent stream of goals and the confident play which was so impressive early in the season, Chelsea should go on to win at least one trophy this season and will compete for the Premiership until the last day of the season.

Can we define Chelsea’s season so far?…The simple answer is no, as there has been some ups and some downs, but the future looks bright for the blues and Scolari appears to have Chelsea playing in a confident and classy way, which could be a great sign for the prospects of the club.

COME ON THE CHELS!