Like It Or Not, Chelsea Are Fitting EPL Champions This Season
By Mike Cardillo
In essence, Chelsea wrapped up the 2014-15 EPL title before the season started. Jose Mourinho addressed his team’s No. 1 priority — a reliable striker — and grabbed Diego Costa off Atletico Madrid. For good measure, Mourinho capitalized on Cesc Fabregas wanting to leave Barcelona, adding a two-way midfielder to complete his dream first-choice XI which would allow him to grind the other 19 clubs of the Premier League down to high-priced dust and gristle over the course of 10 months.
Last year’s so-called “little horse” sprinted out to a lead and never looked back. Chelsea won its first four games and didn’t lose until Dec. 6 at Newcastle.
With the title all but the Blues’ after a win vs. Leicester City on Wednesday — Chelsea can officially clinch Sunday at Stamford Bridge vs. Crystal Palace — the only solace left for Chelsea-haters is to call the team “boring.” Yes, the Arsenal-Chelsea game from the weekend was dull, from a soccer standpoint and “boring, boring Chelsea” is a tweak on an old jibe at Arsenal, but despite Mourinho’s zero-sum, win-at-all-costs mentality as of late, it’s not entirely true.
Mourinho, in his typical fashion, mused about the boring talk, taking some slights at possession-heavy teams that don’t produce goals. From The Guardian, post-Arsenal game.
Mourinho isn’t wholly off the mark, using his usual, unique brand of haughty arrogance to hand-wave a really stupid argument. (‘Is Chelsea boring?’ would be a perfect debate topic to fill time on the UK version of ESPN, wouldn’t it?)
Anyways, Chelsea is second in the league in goals scored with 68, one less than Manchester City, and second in goals allowed (27), one more than Southampton. All told they’ve been held scoreless, once, in league play via a 0-0 draw with Sunderland (?!) in late November. From April 12 against QPR, Manchester United and Arsenal, Chelsea won 1-0, 1-0 and then drew 0-0. Is that boring? Probably. But when you build up a huge lead in August-December, you get this type of luxury. Chelsea were a boxer up on points, doing just enough in the late rounds to walk away with the decision.
Style points are nice, but the primary goal of professional sports (after making money) is to win or become the best. Chelsea clearly is that team in England, as painful as it is to admit given the abhorrent behavior of some of their fans and the ever-presence of the nefarious John Terry.
As loathsome as Terry might be, he’s probably as big a reason as any Chelsea will win the title. Terry, along with Branislav Ivanovic and Eden Hazard, managed to feature in all 34 league games for Chelsea so far, logging more than 3,000 minutes apiece and 21 goals –including four each from Ivanovic and Terry, defenders by trade. Nemanja Matic, Fabregas and Gary Cahill each started 30+ games. Durability and consistency are usually underrated traits in modern soccer. We can debate the overall quality of the Premier League ad nauseam, but the cliché about there being no “easy” games is mostly true, meaning you need your best players fit enough to play — even against the likes of Burnley.
For comparison, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool had four outfield players — combined — who started over 30 league matches: Per Mertesacker, Wayne Rooney, Jordan Henderson and Raheem Sterling.
Mourinho knew the team he wanted to field and used a fairly simple blueprint, not all that much unchanged from his first stint at Stamford Bridge that included two league titles in 2005 and 2006. Chelsea were physically robust at the back, with Terry — as good as he’s ever been at 34 — in front of Thibaut Courtois, allowing Hazard et al. to work their magic in the offensive third. Magic isn’t a word to describe the play of Costa, but the Spanish International cleaned up in the box while making a massive nuisance of himself to the tune of 19 goals in 23 league games.
If history matters, Chelsea in 2004-05 were much more conservative and, if we can allow ourselves, boring, scoring 72 goals on the way to the title and a 95-point haul after losing only one game. (Second place Arsenal notched 87 goals.) Chelsea are at 68 goals in 2014-15 with four games to go. This is also working under the assumption goals are the be-all, end-all for entertainment value. Mourinho’s antics, as obnoxious as they can be, are admittedly amusing — especially when he floated crazy conspiracy theories about the refs.
At times, too, Hazard was alone worth the price of admission. The Belgian deservedly earned PFA Player of the Year honors, scoring 13 times with eight assists. He also finished with the most successful dribbles (155) with the most key passes (88) per Who Scored. The numbers don’t tend to tell the whole story with Hazard. Nor is there a moment where you close your eyes and recall a Hazard goal or moment, unlike say, Alexis Sanchez or even Philippe Coutinho — saying nothing of his otherworldly contemporaries like Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. Hazard’s greatness lies in simple, elegant consistency.
Week in, week out, Hazard did his thing for Chelsea. Despite drawing 2-3 opponents every time he touched the ball around the area, he never picked up an injury or missed time via a hard challenge. To have your most skilled player also among your most durable is a luxury few teams possess.
And it’s also striking, I guess, that a team can feature someone as graceful as Hazard at one end and as brutal as Terry at the other. For Chelsea, this dichotomy worked.
What also worked is something that’s simplistic and easy to dismiss in the age of metrics and stats. Chelsea were a team and manifested their outward identity from Day One, in part due to Terry. Lionizing the Lionhearted “Leader Legend” is mostly stomach-turning unless you fly the Blue flag or fetishize the idea of a blood-and-guts English centerback, but Terry’s on-field personality certainly helped Chelsea, especially as most of its on-field rivals struggled to find their footing early on. The one Chelsea player who appeared to publicly grumble about playing time, Andre Schürrle, got sold in January while everybody else — take would-be regulars anywhere else like Ramires, Willian — filled their role when called upon.
Forgot about aesthetics and style points. The Blues are a fair representation of where the English Premier League was in 2015 — brilliant in spots, unrelentingly physical and never short on controversy.
[Getty]