Jose Mourinho seems destined to return to Chelsea a different man to the one that first arrived in London in 2004. Some things will be different, and some things will be the same – such as the fact that Mourinho will yet again come into conflict with his predecessor. He has never enjoyed a good relationship with Benitez, the acrimonious relationship between the pair stemming back to the time they spent in confrontation as managers of Chelsea and Liverpool. It will come as no surprise if Mourinho aims no barbs at the departing interim manager. Read the rest of this entry »
Chelsea look to reportedly spend upwards of £100m this summer as our rebuilding project nears completion. The below suggestions are all players I have seen with some regularity over the past season. They are players that I believe Chelsea can realistically buy, so players like Lewandowski and Capoue who are linked heavily elsewhere (to the point of it almost being a done deal) will be omitted. Read the rest of this entry »
Impatience is a virtue, taking your time is wasting your time. This modern philosophy fuelled a Samsung advertising campaign (a bit of brand Chelsea there, I expect a commission if you are reading this) and has largely seen Chelsea sweep all before them in the Abramovich era. Frankly speaking, I would not swap the past ten years for anything. However, this season has given rise to questions like never before in terms of the running of the club. Is the lack of any salient long-term thinking inhibiting Chelsea from building upon its recent successes? Read the rest of this entry »
In the grand scheme of things yesterday’s result against West Bromwich Albion proved two things.
- The atmosphere in the ground, “toxic” if you wish to believe the Sky sanitisation era, has absolutely nothing to do with performance or results.
- Benitez, himself, is to blame for mismanagement during matches.
Before the inevitable Liverpool cult jump in here and start blubbering on about ‘istory, class, trophy count and Istanbul – we, strangely, do not care about you. So back to the task at hand given the two points above how did I come to this conclusion? Rather obvious really – football, after all is a simple game complicated by idiots (see what I did there?). Read the rest of this entry »
While the Rafalution™ (defined as ‘having the appearance of progress, but in reality destroying from within’) embodies much of what is currently wrong with Chelsea as a football cloob (sorry, it is contagious) the serious lack of direction from those above will continue to hamper any hopes for a positive development of a young squad. While there are many levels of idiocy to the aforementioned statement, in terms of the squad we seem to have forgotten that the midfield matters most. The number of times under Benitez that we have been so categorically outplayed in midfield is verging on the ridiculous. Whether it was being outfought by West Ham, outwitted by QPR, out Chelsea’d by Swansea or just outrun by Newcastle the balance and make-up of our midfield needs a serious rethink in the summer.
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