Chelsea players face watching video nasty as Jose Mourinho searches for answers
What’s wrong at Chelsea?
Let’s start with their problems on the pitch, taking into account that their game at Everton on Saturday was the first after a double-header of international games that, historically, is always a problem for bigger teams.
Sir Alex Ferguson talked regularly of international breaks harming his team for the first domestic game back.
Indeed, I spoke to a member of the Swansea City staff on Sunday evening, who told me that the international break was the only real reason why they couldn’t break down ten-man Watford during their 1-0 defeat at Vicarage Road on Saturday. “We were sluggish and slow,” he said. “Actually, we looked jetlagged.”
But for all that, Chelsea’s 3-1 defeat at Goodison Park wasn’t a freak, even if it was by far and away the Blues’ worst performance of the season.
The first five games of their defence of the Premier League title has yielded only one win together with a draw and three defeats.
While there is a long way to go in the season, it’s worth noting that no team with the same record or worse after the opening five games has ever finished higher than third.
Another factor. I was worried for Chelsea when manager Jose Mourinho picked a fight with his medical staff.
It may not sound like a big deal, it may not sound like something that would affect players, but you’d be amazed at the bond that forms between players and medical staff. In fact, all the staff.
There is a deep respect and friendship between players and the medics that you won’t find between medical staff and coaching staff.
The medical team look after the players. They humour them, massage them, stretch them. They are the first point of contact for most players in the morning when they arrive at the training ground.
Players arrive, they get changed, they go to the canteen and then they go to the physio room for their ailments to be seen to and, mostly, for the craic.
And in that room, the players get to know their physio. They get to know his banter, his family, his likes and dislikes. He becomes respected and above all, in some cases, a mate.
I wrote in an article at the time: “When players lose confidence in the manager, it is always in the wake of a collection of odd, sometimes desperate, decisions and irrational behaviour for which there is the minimum of justification and which, by extension, makes the players and staff look pathetic and stupid.”
Mourinho’s public condemnation of his physio, Jon Fearn, and doctor, Eva Carneiro, was a mistake by him and cannot be underestimated.
I said that it would lead to problems between Mourinho and the players and that has since been borne out.
I couldn’t have imagined that it would contribute to a run of form quite as bad as we’re currently seeing but it is certainly a factor, given that the pair are universally popular among the players.
In the changing-room, they were seen as easy and weak targets for a very powerful manager to hang so publicly, particularly in the wake of an incident in which the pair were, quite literally, just doing their jobs.
The above may be contributory factors to the loss of form but the team is still largely the same XI, so how does all that manifest itself on the pitch?
The first thing is that the desire wanes. The players outwardly show that they aren’t happy in the most basic way.
They don’t run quite as far and as fast, they don’t close down with the same intensity and, when the opposition take advantage of that, the confidence saps.
Lack of collective confidence reveals itself in very interesting ways. Players play easy passes rather than trying the harder things that they know they may not succeed in.
For example, centre midfielders play the ball square to full backs who aren’t now running in behind because they’ve lost enthusiasm.
The striker begins to be dominated by the centre halves, so he hides. Hiding on the pitch is a crime against football as far as team-mates are concerned.
Strikers hide by not making themselves available to receive a pass. They do this because it means that if they don’t get the ball, then they can blame others for lack of service.
It also means that the player on the ball will likely be dispossessed or have to pass backwards, making him look like a poor player.
This culture of blame shifting goes on all over the pitch and always leads to arguments in the changing room at half time and after the game.
And the truth is, as any manager in the game will tell you, that it is incredibly hard to pull a team out of that mindset. So much damage is done so quickly when teams head down that path; it’s like the slipperiest slope you’ve ever seen.
Tactically, Chelsea are setting up in much the same way as they ever did, particularly away from home. They sit back and wait for the opposition to overplay or overcommit and then counter-attack at will.
The team usually has its first line of defence ten yards inside its own half. As the ball is moved across the pitch, a midfielder will break ranks to close the ball and ensure that the passing continues to go side to side and not forward into feet.
What I’ve noticed in the last few games is that Chelsea are at least ten yards deeper than they were when this tactic is working at its best for them. The back four are too deep and the midfield become detached.
That means that holes appear and space opens up, the type of space that Steven Naismith exploited so well at Goodison Park.
If you sit too deep, you invite pressure, but if you’re too high, you expose the space in behind for faster strikers to run on to.
Teams take their lines from the back four and the back four need to be playing in the “Goldilocks Zone”. Not too high, not too deep.
Chelsea captain John Terry is getting older and dropping deeper and Kurt Zouma isn’t ready to lead the line on his own and command those in front of him.
Terry’s fragility in old age has highlighted that Gary Cahill desperately needs a leader alongside him. Cahill is a good player but, when Terry isn’t there, his defending takes on an air of last-ditch desperation.
If you want my honest assessment of the problems facing Mourinho, then I’d lay good money on the reason for the team’s terrible form at the feet of a group of world-class players who have had enough of sitting back and soaking up pressure against teams that they feel are inferior.
The truth is that, in the big games where Mourinho is very cautious in the set-up of his team, the approach has worked.
But Chelsea have the players to attack teams such as Everton, Crystal Palace and Swansea. They have the ability to overwhelm anybody.
They have players who want to get on the ball. Players like Cesc Fabregas, who can dictate a match, Willian, who scares the life out of full backs when he runs at them, Nemanja Matic, who is a beast of a player but with great feet, too.
They have Eden Hazard, who is probably the best attacking player in the league. And in front of them, they have a predator, Diego Costa, who thrives on service, not the odd counter-attack.
The players have spat their dummies out because of the way they are being utilised on the pitch by Mourinho. I’ve seen it a million times and the current problems at Chelsea are as clear an example as you will ever see.
It’s obvious in the way that the team shuts down. It’s obvious in the way that they compete and it’s obvious in the results.
There will be a meeting between the staff and the players at the Chelsea training ground today and the team will watch the highlights and lowlights of Saturday’s game – if the computer is working.
At first, they will be cautious, but then the points will gather momentum and, eventually, somebody will be brave enough to say what everyone else is thinking …
“We’re too deep, gaffer. We should play more on the front foot and attack teams more regularly. We need to keep the ball more and create more chances and be ruthless.”
And then the team will go out on to the training pitch and work on attacking Maccabi Tel Aviv, from the first whistle, in the Champions League at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday.
They have the team to do it. The players know it and, deep down, Mourinho knows it, too
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