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The biggest threat to Chelsea this season comes from within. As the new Premiership season starts, the question remains - Can Mourinho keep the team together? The answer to this question will indicate whether Chelsea can win their third consecutive title.
In his first two seasons in West London, he had good players with hunger. Very few of them had ever won anything and were therefore very eager to taste success. The squad of players was young and the manager was able to motivate them by telling them how it felt to win the league, to win the Champions League and taste success. Even experienced and much decorated players like Makelele had a lot to prove because his acrimonious parting from Real Madrid meant that he still had much to show.
When Mourinho came to Chelsea, he made it clear that he wanted to have a policy of buying young players with a desire to make champions of them. He has now succeeded in that goal but has added one new ingredient and that is the purchase of Shevchenko and Ballack who have very little to prove. We will now see how impressive his motivational skills really are!
As I have mentioned in previous blogs, his ability to minimise the cliques and dampen the egos will decide how well the club will do.
Other teams have their own problems. Liverpool is the team that seems to worry Mourinho the most. Player to player, I still think that Chelsea are way ahead but football is about producing teams and Liverpool are certainly improving as a unit especially now that they have bought new attackers. Mourinho has to prove that his magical ability to create that family unit is still strong and that they have not become complacent. It will be interesting to see if Benitez manages to keep the “bad boys” of Bellamy and Pennant on side for the season.
Manchester United is desperately trying to build a midfield. They have already bought Michael Carrick and are still trying to buy a holding midfielder in Villareal’s Marcos Senna or Bayern Munich’s Owen Hargreaves. They are in desperate need to replace Keane. Their attack also seems weak and I am not sure that it will be so easy to replace Van Nistelrooy. I cannot see Saha, Rossi and Solskjaer being strong enough to replace the old Ruud strike rate.
Arsenal play some lovely football and will be playing their first game in the new stadium this weekend. They have a wonderful player in Henry and a future superstar in Fabregas. I am not convinced that over a long season they have enough strength in midfield to survive the evening kick offs in the north in a cold January evening. They certainly have the flair but are over-reliant on Gilberto Silva to toughen up their midfield. Wenger is a great manager and he will find a solution but it may require him to buy extra reinforcements in January especially if Ashley Cole and Reyes leave before the end of the transfer window. I believe that Wenger is still one season away from reproducing another great team, even if this time, it is completely foreign in its make-up.
Tottenham have a very good manager in Martin Jol. He is honest, upfront and very well respected. It is also very good for English football that he is buying a lot of young English players. Tottenham have strengthened their squad this season and it will be interesting to see if they can do enough to upset the big four teams. They will also be playing in the UEFA Cup this year and they could do very well in this competition, possibly inspiring them to target the Champions League next year.
To date, Chelsea’s pre-season has not been very impressive. The formation that allows Mourinho to get the best of his players is still in doubt. Many players are injured which has had a big effect on a relatively small squad. The lack of time for pre-season training has had a negative effect as was shown by their fitness levels at last week’s Community Shield match against Liverpool.
The first three games of this season will go a long way to decide how Chelsea do in the Premiership. Today’s match against Manchester City brings a team to Stamford Bridge who, the season before last, was the only team to beat Chelsea in the league. Last year they arrived for the equivalent fixture with a lot of injured players. This year it is Chelsea’s turn as Cech, Makelele, Gallas, Cole and Ballack will not be taking part. I still expect Chelsea to have enough of fire power to get past Manchester but I suspect that it will require a moment of individual magic as the team unit is still not there.
The next two matches are Middlesbrough and Blackburn away. We lost both matches last year but I am thrilled that Chelsea will be playing both matches this season in August rather than in January. The cold northern air does not seem to suit the southerners. I expect us to end up with seven points at the end of these three matches but feel it may be as few as five in which case we may be four points behind the leader by the end of August.
I am confident that we will catch up soon enough but I am frustrated that the players and management have not had enough time together to allow for a better start.
Fasten your seatbelts for a long season with plenty of rollercoaster ups and downs.
Come on Chelsea!
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