The big story of the Premier League season is not the fine start of Manchester City and Arsenal.
Nor is it Aston Villa and Sunderland’s ongoing decline which must surely end in relegation.
It is certainly not Palace with our ‘win some, lose some’ approach leaving us very nicely placed in eighth as we head for the next international break.
It is not West Ham United or Leicester City who have out-performed the expectations of all but their most blinkered one-eyed supporters.
It is of course Chelsea, whose remarkable loss of form continued on Saturday with a yet another defeat, this time at Stoke City.
Among all the other sides in the Premier League I find it hard to like Chelsea. Living south of Croydon I have always found myself surrounded by what I think is a disproportionately high number of Chelsea fans, even before the new fans brought aboard after the success of the first Mourinho reign.
In my early years supporting Palace, Chelsea were not a big side. In fact they were a team with an unsteady financial base that bounced up and down between the top two divisions.
Enter first the late Matthew Harding, then Roman Abramovich and over £1billion in investment, and here there are – a great big club, with a history before 1992 limited to memories of the flamboyant and physical side of the early 1970’s.
But amusingly for the rest of us, they are a great big club who have now lost seven league games out of twelve.
The main focus of the national press this weekend was once again on Jose flipping Mourinho, who was not even at the game.
While Mourinho is charismatic, controversial and rarely dull, the sustained focus by the press on him is like watching a game of football played by seven year olds where everyone just follows the ball, and there is no strategy or tactical nuance.
I find the attention on him to be rather uncomfortable. There was a programme on Channel 4 last week where chef Michel Roux Jr was training apparently unemployable people to become chefs or waiters. In one scene a poor girl with Tourette’s swears throughout as the chef tries to calmly brief the applicants.
It was very uncomfortable to watch. It is not dissimilar with the insistence of interviewing Mourinho at every opportunity in the apparent hope he will say something crazy.
If Mourinho does go, and Chelsea’s poor form continues then it will be time to look at other causes of Chelsea’s demise.
When we are not being told to follow the manager we are told to look at the players, who it appears may or may not be trying to get Mourinho sacked, an area in which Andre Villas-Boas might allege may have happened in the past.
The players in the Chelsea squad have all got at least one winners medal and they know Mourinho has a great CV, winning leagues in four countries. If we exclude Yohan Cabaye from our side and young Loftus-Cheek on their side, I am guessing that everyone who has played for Chelsea earns more than everyone playing at Palace.
In those circumstances, if there is a player rebellion there, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Mourinho has been renowned for sticking to a small core of players, in comparison to the broader and more regular squad rotation of the other top sides. Last year we knew his best team. It did not need to be changed because it worked – a great keeper, solid back four plus Matic in the Jedinak role. Fagregas, Oscar and Willian made the passes for Hazard and Diego Costa to cause chaos.
Simples.
In addition to them were some solid citizens and Jon-Obi Mikel on the bench and fifty-odd guys out on loan.
Last season’s Chelsea side peaked early, pulled clear and then held on for dear life to win the title. In retrospect, it seems that other sides had begun to work out how to play them, and that Chelsea failed to adapt.
Two players were singled out for praise last season – Matic and Diego Costa. Both have struggled this year. Matic has been weaker against teams (like Palace) who attack on the wings rather than through the middle. Costa has been less effective against defenders who stand up to him and keep calm, something highlighted when Damien Delaney marked him early in the season.
As those two, along with Hazard, Oscar and Fabregas, have struggled to repeat their form of last season, there has been no-one in the squad to challenge them.
The fifty guys on loan are surely there to be whittled down into a small group who can push their way into the side as the likes of Terry and Ivanovic age, and to challenge the out of form players like Fabregas and Oscar, who may not be at their best on the wet Wednesdays in Stoke. It was a model that worked well with Thiebauld Courtois, replacing Petr Cech.
So where are these other fifty future stars in Chelsea’s hour of need? Well, we know Victor Moses is at West Ham and Patrick Bamford has scored some good goals at Beckenham in training. I think Vitesse Arnhem are doing okay in the Belgian League too, so well done to the many Chelsea loanees there.
While the number of players Chelsea have out on loan is absurd, it is a profitable business. For example, Oriol Romeu was sold to Southampton in the summer for £5 million after playing only a handful of first team games. Victor Moses could be sold for over £10 million, especially as he signed a four year contract on the day he joined West Ham on loan.
This nice little earner has not helped the team on the pitch. At the level they play, £5 million defensive midfield players are no use (though it should cover Eva Carneiro’s compensation bill). A player who can make a difference to the Chelsea first eleven will cost tens of millions. Chelsea did sign Pedro over the summer but Manchester City, a team with similar funding and business model, signed Sterling, Ottamendi, Delph and de Bruyne to push themselves past Chelsea.
Chelsea have also suffered some misfortune. Selling Petr Cech to Arsenal was excellent business at the time. Now, with Courtois injured, they would love to have Cech back. The Fabregas goal at West Ham that was ruled out by technology was as close to being a goal as it is possible to get.
But theory that there is an anti-Chelsea conspiracy is clearly nonsense. Not that that should stop the wonderful Chelsea Twitter feed pretending otherwise – it is a must follow when Chelsea are struggling!
The Matic sending off at West Ham that prompted Mourinho’s visit to the referee’s room, which in turn led to his stadium ban on Saturday, was almost identical to that of Dwight Gayle also against West Ham the week before.
I am fine with Chelsea fans standing by their manager – whoever succeeds him will be dull in comparison. But do not follow him or the club blindly.
Chelsea fans have been fortunate to have the incredible investment in their club for the last twenty years. Now is the time to question whether the right decisions are being made, and whether the continuous focus on Mourinho is distracting them from more fundamental issues.
