… Chelsea: Five Games Ahead After a good win yesterday against Aston Villa at the Bridge, Chelsea’s Premiership fixtures list between now and 8 November, 2014 reads – Arsenal (H) – Sunday, 5 October; Crystal Palace (A) – Saturday 18 October; Man United (A) 26 October; QPR (H) – Saturday, 1 November and Liverpool (A) – Saturday, 8 November. It’s 15 points at stake. Of course, as a Chelsea fan, I personally wish Chelsea take all the points; but if we are forced to make a conservative guess of which are the surest 3 points, that would be QPR at home. They don’t seem to have much to trouble us at home and on paper we look too strong for them all over the park. But Harry Redknapp is an excellent manager and his team are in desperate need of the points. They could come to the Bridge and try to play spoilers - not to win, but to simply try to stop us winning. But, I’m confident we’ll get the three points. Arsenal at the Bridge will certainly be tougher than the corresponding fixture last time around, because it was one of the worst Arsenal performances last season. If only with the determination not to be so humiliated again, they’ll come fighting, all guns blazing! They will not come trying to play a defensive game, because they know we will surely pry them open and score. So, they’ll come with an all-attacking game, hoping to stun us by scoring more than we can score. It’s going to be a hard game, but I’ll give it to the Blues. I say this, because over 90 minutes, Arsenal would find it hard to execute such a plan. Under Arsene Wenger, they do not know how to play a defensive tactician like Jose Mourinho, which is why Mourinho consistently gets the better of Wenger in their encounters. Yeah, Wenger had won the Premiership before Mourinho came to the Premiership that first time, but he won with a backline inherited from the defensive-minded George Graham. Since that backline of Tony Adams, Steve Bould, Lee Dixon, Martin Keown and Nigel Winterburn moved on, Wenger has been unable to put a respectable defence together. This was why they brought back Bould as his assistant, but Wenger is too stubborn to listen to him. His whole focus on attack play or the so-called beautiful game is a ruse to cover up his patent lack of understanding of the defensive game. Thus, looked at from this perspective, the mystery of the drought in Arsenal’s trophy cabinet until last season’s FA Cup win would be no mystery at all. Looking at the team he has now, that win of last season would seem like a fluke They certainly don’t look like they’d win the league on the evidence of what we have seen so far and coming to the Bridge would only confirm that. Chelsea under Mourinho are a great counter-attacking, transitions-tutored team that will most certainly undo any plan Wenger has at any level. It might not be as bad as last season for the Gunners, but it would be a convincing Chelsea win. Crystal Palace away after the international break is a tricky one. Neil Warnock’s side, much like Pulis’s before him, are punching above their weight. The wily Warnock is good at throwing spanner in the works. Beating Chelsea would be his biggest ambition this season, because he’s always admired Mourinho and is good at coming up with comparative self-deprecating humour about him and Mourinho on the touchline. They lost narrowly to Arsenal in the opening day of the season, but have gone on to beat Everton at Goodison, a no mean feat and have just clinically demolished the adrenalin-filled Leicester team that the week before humbled Manchester United. They would be playing Hull away before meeting us, but that wouldn’t give any indication of how they would perform against us. My suspicion is that Warnock will stick to Pulis’s script of last season’s corresponding fixture. He would bank on the Chelsea players being a little jaded from their international commitments and then invite them to attack with a view to sucker-punching them with counter-attacks and defensive solidity. But I think Mourinho has learnt from last season. He would simply not take the bait. He knows it would be a bruising physical encounter, but Remy and Drogba could be his key to undoing Crystal Palace. Mourinho is keen to let the world know that Chelsea would not make the mistake of last season where they beat the big teams but surprisingly fell to the minions. This is going to be three points for Chelsea, despite what would be an impressive Palace display. Mourinho is on a mission and Warnock would not be given a chance to do a Pulis. The game against Manchester United at Old Trafford would be one of the contests of the season. It’s good it’s coming after the Crystal Palace game, even though in-between, Chelsea would have an important Champions League game against Maribor. However, just as Mourinho prioritized the clash with Man City above the opening Champions League game against Schalke, so he would prioritize the clash against Manchester United above Maribor, especially as United would be fresher since they have no European commitments. But in this case, Chelsea would ease to a good home win against Maribor with essentially a second string team and then go to Old Trafford to lay down a marker for the season. Manchester United would have played West Brom before they meet us, but, again, that game wouldn’t say much about how they’d set out against Chelsea. What would be at stake here would be more than three points. This is a game Louis van Gaal would desperately want to win against his former assistant, if only to shut the mouth of critics who say he’s out of his depth in the Premier League. Beating Mourinho who arguably is the most successful Premiership manager presently in service would give his team the needed oomph and there is no better place to do it than at Old Trafford. Mourinho on the other hand won’t be fazed. He would tell his players to treat it like any other game and downplay his rivalry with his old boss. He knows that if anyone understands his football philosophy better than anybody managing in the Premiership at the moment, it is van Gaal, because he was one of his previous bosses who bought Mourinho’s football thinking hook, line and sinker even before the Portuguese tactician came to limelight. While together at Barcelona, van Gaal treated Mourinho as though he was a manager in his own right, giving him control of some domestic cup games while he, van Gaal sat on the bench as his assistant. In fact, when Mourinho left him at Barcelona to take up the Assistant Manager job at Benfica where Jupp Heynckes was the manager, van Gaal told Mourinho that he was too good to be anybody’s assistant in the game. He told him to go to the Benfica board and tell them that they either give him the number one position or no deal. So, both managers have deep respect for each other, but just as he did when he outwitted van Gaal in the Champions League while at Inter, Mourinho would want to do the same here. He will not take anything for granted. He knows the attacking threat the Manchester United team pose (even without a suspended Wayne Rooney), but his key tactic would be to strangulate Manchester United in midfield. The immense figures of Nemanja Matic and Mikel Obi or Matic and Ramirez (if fit) would kill off any overambitious Manchester United idea of trying to use the middle to do damage. The much-touted van Gaal’s 3-5-1 will meet it’s Waterloo in a Chelsea team that is solid in the wings and very mobile in the middle and upfront. Mr Radamel Falcao would be thoroughly starved of the ball and Mourinho would drill set-pieces drills of all sorts into the heads of his players. My heart says a Chelsea win, but it could be a draw, just like last season, even though that was an early season affair. At any rate, there is no way Mourinho would allow this Manchester United team get away with a win against him. It just won’t happen. No one is looking forward to the Liverpool game more than Brendan Rodgers. He’s a very ambitious manager who believes that a win against his old mentor, Mourinho would kick-start his own managerial greatness and he believes he can do it with this Liverpool team. Last season, in the corresponding fixture, he fell for the old Mourinho trick of assuming that Mourinho’s threat of fielding a weakened side against Liverpool, because of injuries and the upcoming Champions League game against Atletico would favour him, especially as the clear beneficiaries of a Chelsea win would be Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City. Knowing the rivalry between Mourinho and Pelegrini, Rodgers probably thought Mourinho would prefer a Liverpool win that would have set them up nicely to take the title than a Chelsea win that would put Manchester City in pole position. But Mourinho had no dog in the title fight and was typically only going to do the professional thing, which is put out a team to win at Anfield. If anyone understands the psychology of Anfield, it’s Mourinho. Unlike most teams that go out there and fold before the Kop, Mourinho’s teams actually go out there to shut them up. Last season, his five-man midfield protecting the back four simply gave Liverpool the possession, while stifling them in the third. It was a tactic based on exploiting the home side’s mistakes and the two Chelsea goals that won the game for them unsurprisingly came via such mistakes. Steven Gerrard tripping over under pressure leading to Ba’s goal and Willian’s goal from a brilliant counter-attacking play typified this. Rodgers thought that because they were on a rampaging run with an 11-game winning streak and a 16-game unbeaten run, Chelsea were going to come to Anfield to park the bus, but, instead, Mourinho brought a variation that disguised a solid defensive play with a mobile midfield that played up in the opponents’ half, while not leaving space for Luis Suarez to run into. In the end, Joe Allen’s volley from the edge of the area beautifully palmed away by Mark Schwarzer in the Chelsea goal was their best chance. Suarez’s frustrating day ended with Schwarzer acrobatically denying him even a consolation goal in stoppage time. This time, there is no Suarez, but Liverpool have abundant riches in midfield that could trouble Chelsea. Mario Balotelli and Daniel Sturridge in front would have something to prove against Mourinho and Chelsea respectively, but I just don’t see a worse result for Chelsea than a draw. Like the Manchester United game, my heart says a win, but my head says a draw. So, my conservative take is that Chelsea would get 11 points out of these five games and my more optimistic take is that they’d take the whole 15 points. I certainly prefer the last, but from my analysis, whatever happens, after these five games, I still see Chelsea at the top and that is where they’d be till the end of the season. Other teams should fight for other trophies, because, the mood Mourinho is in now, I can’t see anyone surprising him. He wants to win the Premier League and he wants to win it convincingly and he will. …
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 14:22:32 +0000
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