Jose Mourinho’s claim last season that Chelsea were a “little horse” in amongst the favourites for the title will hold no sway for the new campaign. The Portuguese has added three high quality signings from Spain to strengthen their push for the Premier League crown. Diego Costa (27 goals for La Liga winning Atletico Madrid), Felipe Luis and Cesc Fabregas will give The Blues a boost in defence, midfield and attack. Costa is the potentially world class centre-forward that Mourinho has been desperate to bring to West London after the dire performances of Torres, Ba and Eto’o, whose combined goal tally for the season (19) was 8 less than Costa managed on his own, and who, effectively ended Chelsea’s quest for 1st position.
Costa will be joined by a 36 year old Didier Drogba, brought in surely to motivate and cultivate a winning mentality for this second incarnation of Mourinho’s Chelsea. Captain, John Terry, should be able to continue for another season alongside Gary Cahill, with Cesar Azpilicueta at right back and new recruit Felipe Luis at left back, making Chelsea undoubtedly one of the most solid defences in Europe, especially when you also consider the competition in goal between Petr Cech and Thibaut Courtois. In fact, Mourinho’s men conceded 10 fewer goals than Champions Manchester City last season and 23 less than 2nd placed Liverpool.
An injury to the influential Terry could be easily covered by the likes of the highly experienced Branislav Ivanovic, or even the promising young centre-backs Kurt Zouma and Kenneth Ormeru. Up front though, the lucratively assembled squad does not possess much cover if Costa were to pick up an injury. Drogba will not be able to play an entire 90 minutes in consecutive matches and Fernando Torres does not seem to be a 20 goal-a-season striker any more, sadly. The £28m sale of Romelu Lukaku to Everton was in large part about trying to measure up to Uefa’s impending financial fair play regulations, and balance out the extravagant fee paid to Barcelona for Fabregas.
The goals of the wingers and attacking midfielders (Eden Hazard – top scorer last term with 14) will be key to Chelsea’s League challenge (unless Costa stays injury-free and rattles in 30 plus goals); Hazard, Schurrle, Oscar and Fabregas are all potentially 15 plus goals-a-season players, not to mention the industrious but slightly less prolific, Willian.
The problem with Chelsea’s lack of cutting edge in forward areas cannot solely be blamed on the players though, as Mourinho’s sometimes intensely negative tactics must also be taken into consideration. Sitting back and counter-attacking against the best teams in the League may have worked for Jose last season (Chelsea had the best record against Clubs in the top half of the table) but their results against teams in the lower half was not good enough for a team that is trying to build consistency – a poor 65% win ratio meant Chelsea finished 7th in that particular table, a statistic that can be explained by Chelsea’s difficulty in breaking down defences that sit deep against them.
Cesc Fabregas, and their now talismanic midfielder, Nemanja Matic, may be able to help change their style of play to a more direct and penetrative one. Matic only played 15 games since his re-arrival in January but has made a significant impression from the base of midfield. The 26 year old Serbian made 4 assists and 23 key passes in that short time, while even more impressively, taking 13 shots and making 23 successful dribbles, not to mention screening the danger from in front of the defence extremely efficiently.
If Matic and Fabregas can click in the engine room, along with Oscar, then we could see a far more progressive and slick looking Chelsea unit this season, eschewing the plodding and workman-like combination of Mikel, Ramires and Lampard, and creating a midfield that can link far more speedily to the danger-men, Hazard and Costa.
