Just some thoughts on the title race as it's shaping up. It is of course too early to be counting points or comparing the difficulty of the remaining fixtures like you would do in the final stretch - sometimes what initially looks like a tight race turns out to be one-sided once the season really gets into a groove. But at the moment it does look like the top 3 teams - Chelsea, ourselves and City in current order in the table - are pretty evenly matched and what makes it even more interesting is that the respective teams' strengths and weaknesses pretty much mirror each other.
City have the deepest pool of creative talent, they can saturate the midfield with top-class attackers who are all also tactically savvy and hard-working and so will dominate most games. The way they schooled Chelsea and starved us of oxygen at Anfield in the 1st half was seriously impressive. However, their lack of reliable cutting edge up front means that they will either be blowing teams away when they are playing well or failing to make their dominance count when things are just a bit off and that's what we saw in the games where they've dropped points. That being said, if Guardiola gets the personnel and the rotation decisions right, they have the best chance of all 3 teams to go on a long winning run that can propel them to the title.
We have unquestionably the best starting 11, a world-class striker in the best form of his career in Salah, a great CB pairing, best creative full-backs in the country and a front 3 or 4 with serious cutting edge and a variety of threats. Being highly efficient in both boxes means that we don't necessarily need to dominate in midfield to win – as long as we don't lose the midfield battle, we're probably OK (a mirror opposite of City for whom dominating in midfield is the basic prerequisite to any kind of positive result). Our fatal flaw is the small squad, so we're are the most likely of all the contenders to be affected by an injury crisis or accumulation of fatigue. Some of these concerns have been somewhat ameliorated with the positive contributions from the likes of Tsimikas, Jones and Origi and the hope for quick recovery by the exciting Elliott, but I still need to see some consistency in midfield selections before I can start getting more confident about our chances.
Finally, we have Chelsea who have a completely different set of strengths – a near impenetrable defensive unit with good depth and excellent balance of youth and experience in every position in the back 7, but at the moment their expensive attackers are all misfiring – Lukaku hasn't scored for 6 games running, Werner is doing some useful things in stretching defenses, but his finishing is still Werner-esque and Havertz, Pulisic, Zyech and others seems to be losing rather than gaining in confidence. Will the goals from the likes of Chilwell and Chalobah eventually dry up and thus put even more pressure on the misfiring offense or will Tuchel gradually solve the issues up front, which will probably have them coast to the title? A related problem is that as good as their defense has been, it is reliant on the numbers compensating for the relative lack of individual quality; they have to play with a back 3 because Rudiger is no Van Dijk or Dias, they don't have defenders comfortable with covering a lot of space by themselves so the whole balance of the team tilts towards defense, leaving their forwards chronically outnumbered (which partly explains why they are struggling).
So to summarize, for City to win the title, they have to get their most effective attackers into red-hot form all at the same time and then go on a deep winning run that will leave everyone else in the dust (they've done that before). For Chelsea to win the title, they need to either find the front 3 that works consistently or tilt the balance of the team a bit more towards attack without losing the solidity (Chelsea have done that before too, but not with these attackers). And for us, we just have to keep the current excellent balance and go through the season relatively injury-free, so that our best players can be rested and fresh for the final stretch. Which of the 3 is more likely, in your opinion?
City have the deepest pool of creative talent, they can saturate the midfield with top-class attackers who are all also tactically savvy and hard-working and so will dominate most games. The way they schooled Chelsea and starved us of oxygen at Anfield in the 1st half was seriously impressive. However, their lack of reliable cutting edge up front means that they will either be blowing teams away when they are playing well or failing to make their dominance count when things are just a bit off and that's what we saw in the games where they've dropped points. That being said, if Guardiola gets the personnel and the rotation decisions right, they have the best chance of all 3 teams to go on a long winning run that can propel them to the title.
We have unquestionably the best starting 11, a world-class striker in the best form of his career in Salah, a great CB pairing, best creative full-backs in the country and a front 3 or 4 with serious cutting edge and a variety of threats. Being highly efficient in both boxes means that we don't necessarily need to dominate in midfield to win – as long as we don't lose the midfield battle, we're probably OK (a mirror opposite of City for whom dominating in midfield is the basic prerequisite to any kind of positive result). Our fatal flaw is the small squad, so we're are the most likely of all the contenders to be affected by an injury crisis or accumulation of fatigue. Some of these concerns have been somewhat ameliorated with the positive contributions from the likes of Tsimikas, Jones and Origi and the hope for quick recovery by the exciting Elliott, but I still need to see some consistency in midfield selections before I can start getting more confident about our chances.
Finally, we have Chelsea who have a completely different set of strengths – a near impenetrable defensive unit with good depth and excellent balance of youth and experience in every position in the back 7, but at the moment their expensive attackers are all misfiring – Lukaku hasn't scored for 6 games running, Werner is doing some useful things in stretching defenses, but his finishing is still Werner-esque and Havertz, Pulisic, Zyech and others seems to be losing rather than gaining in confidence. Will the goals from the likes of Chilwell and Chalobah eventually dry up and thus put even more pressure on the misfiring offense or will Tuchel gradually solve the issues up front, which will probably have them coast to the title? A related problem is that as good as their defense has been, it is reliant on the numbers compensating for the relative lack of individual quality; they have to play with a back 3 because Rudiger is no Van Dijk or Dias, they don't have defenders comfortable with covering a lot of space by themselves so the whole balance of the team tilts towards defense, leaving their forwards chronically outnumbered (which partly explains why they are struggling).
So to summarize, for City to win the title, they have to get their most effective attackers into red-hot form all at the same time and then go on a deep winning run that will leave everyone else in the dust (they've done that before). For Chelsea to win the title, they need to either find the front 3 that works consistently or tilt the balance of the team a bit more towards attack without losing the solidity (Chelsea have done that before too, but not with these attackers). And for us, we just have to keep the current excellent balance and go through the season relatively injury-free, so that our best players can be rested and fresh for the final stretch. Which of the 3 is more likely, in your opinion?
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