I, along with hundreds of thousands of fans over the world, owe Roman Ambramovich an eternal gratitude. He took over the club after we squeezed into the Champions League that kept us afloat for another season and his investment has no doubt taken us to dizzy heights that we dared to dream over no more than a decade a go.
It’s hard to know what to call Roman. Is he a fan that so many claim or is he just a ruthless business tycoon that wants instant success to increase his wealth?
I’m certainly not going to sit here and waste my time having a go at Roman because you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. I know we wouldn’t be where we are without him and I definitely don’t want him to sell up and leave. These glory days may only happen once; we may as well try and drag them out as long as possible. Having said that, Roman clearly has made a grave error towards the fans and the club in hiring FSW whose tactics during the week and today has cost us more points and obviously infuriated fans around the world.
In last week’s blog I mentioned my dislike for FSW on a personal and footballing level so if anything I write is derogatory towards him please don’t make the assumption its because I don’t like him, it is for a valid reason. If I feel he does something right, reluctantly I will give him the credit. Working in football with all different types of people, especially players, you’re going to run into people you don’t like but if they have done something well on the pitch or in preparation for a game I won’t hide away from pointing congratulations in their direction.
Sadly this week…I have nothing but ill to speak of FSW.
Starting with the Fulham game midweek, this was an excellent opportunity for Rafa to get a much needed win. Let’s be honest, you shouldn’t need a great deal of motivation at home, under the floodlights in a London derby with your closest neighbours.
From my perspective in the Shed Lower, Fulham had arrived just looking to avoid defeat and that’s a fair assessment considering they were missing key figures like Hangeland and Ruiz. To me, it appeared Jol had them set up in a rigid compact system where the lines of position from back to front had minimal space in between, which in theory, allows you to be on top of your opponents without having to do a great deal of running. From our point of view, one way of getting around this is hitting balls in the channels early as the high compact line of this system will leave a great deal of space in behind. Potentially, hitting those early balls will also naturally cause the back 4 to sprint back to cover the space in behind and in theory leaving a wider gap between the defence and midfield for our attackers to run into…ideal for someone like Lampard or indeed Mata, who strangely found himself on the bench, to finish off moves.
What frustrated me, in what I can describe as the most boring game I’ve attended since April 2003 in a 0-0 with Middleborough after we had just knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League, was that we played quite deep from midfield and seemed to take an eternity to hit passes or build any speed into an attack. The speed of the attack can’t be blamed on Rafa to an extent because at the end of the day he isn’t the man running around and passing the ball but the way in which we set up deep and the reasons for it, which may have caused this slow pace, can be.
Prior to the Fulham game, Rafa spoke of a fatigue in the squad (and that obviously explains his decision to make some changes). From experience in meetings with football managers in planning games, its always recommended that if you have a feeling that the team/squad is tired, you tend to sit deeper and control the tempo in your half to try and conserve energy and then explode out later in games. This way you have energy and you have players behind the ball to stop conceding the goals so you cant lose the game.
To disagree with Rafa, as has practically every other fan, I find it hard to believe that a squad with an average age of 23 can suffer from fatigue in November. Of course, Rafa is right, it’s a squad game and you utilize it all and we’ve played a huge number of games but to have that mentality (it would appear) going into games is a recipe for disaster. What made it worse, as I’ve explained about Fulham, is that they didn’t really try and win the game. So in the end, you had both teams playing slowly, being conservative and waiting for one another to get sucked out to hit on the counter attack. I don’t want to disrespect Fulham, but for Chelsea, at home that mentality is not good enough and the manager is the one creating that mentality.
Obviously, all fans (including myself) want to blame Rafa and I think we have a case in this game. However, it is up to the players to go out and win the game. They have to take the responsibility too and they looked a bit lost (I’ll go into this a bit more shortly). In the end, with about 20 minutes to go, the crowd turned. In truth it was quite a shit atmosphere and baring a few pockets of us, nobody really wanted to sing. Usually I really can’t stand this but I can understand this mentality in the majority. Everyone is pissed off with the club and maybe just can’t be arsed. I’m as pissed off as anyone and at times all I want to do is sing directly at the board, Roman and Rafa but perhaps we could have done more on Wednesday to gee up the players because it obviously wasn’t coming from the manager. That said, there is only so much us fans can do. The rest is up to the manager and players.
The West Ham game quite frankly was embarrassing on all levels from our point of view. The management, the player’s attitude and leadership when it was needed most were just poor. The only good thing I think we can take away from the game was we, the away fans, who deserved a lot more than we got and certainly didn’t need to be disrespected with only 4 players coming over at the end.
The first half, I’m still unsure (based upon the second half) whether we played quite well or perhaps West Ham just hadn’t shown up. Although I felt our build up was a bit slow for the most of it (again possibly due to instructions to save some energy) we generally controlled the first half with ease, baring the odd aerial threat. Mata had a lot of time on the ball and was dictating our play in the attacking 3rd, while the wizardry of Hazard and Moses gave West Ham a torrid time. Baring the sloppy finishing and decent saves from the Hammers defence, a larger margin would have been a much fairer reflection on the game. The goal we scored too was a cracking footballing goal. Just goes to show that when Torres decides to make his movement a threat, which has been absent in recent games, he will split a defense and showed he had a pass to match.
This of course brings me to the second half and where I’m going to really lay into the manager. I think the first question should be what could he possibly have said at half time? Now clearly, I wasn’t in the dressing room, I was in the away end enjoying the day so far. But having to draw an opinion on it to write in this blog, I’m going to have a guess based upon the previous arrogant behavior of the FSW.
As we saw and I’ve mentioned already, West Ham were bloody awful first half. Is it too farfetched to believe that Rafa has sat them down and said something along the lines of; “This lot are no good, we’ve created many chances and just need to take one and its game over. Sit a bit deeper, save your energy and hit them on the break when they try to attack”. That’s practically what we did in the second half and before I bring in examples, the above stab in the dark to Rafa’s team talk is actually something Gerrard mentioned on a few occasion in his autobiography and something Stephen Henchoz recently came out and eluded to about Rafa’s arrogance in approaching other teams.
Within in the first 5 minutes of the second half, it was very obvious that we had sat deeper. The gap between the 2 holding players and the back 4 was probably 5 yards or less which then left the gap between that lot and the attackers to about 15-20 yards…that leaves an awful lot of space for West Ham’s newly re-enforced midfield with the introduction of Diame to pick the ball off our attackers and have acres of ground to run into.
The momentum of the game swung because of this tactic in my opinion. We went from the mentality of a team that dictated the pace and control of the game to a conservative and defensive team looking to soak up pressure and hit on the break…not exactly the best idea playing an inform side at home when your back 4 is as leaky as a broken tap. You could see how deep we were when crosses were coming in, with 3 to mark; we had a line of 6 as Ramires and Mikel sat in along the back 4. It just invited pressure on and eventually we cracked.
Although the first goal could arguably be a foul, I still feel Ivanovic should have been stronger. Little bit of misfortune as the impressive Azpilicueta slipped when winning the ball back.
The second goal came from losing the ball, sitting deep and just a real lack of desire to win it back. I’m a huge Mikel fan but for someone so big and strong he did nothing about Cole laying the ball back (and had a general nightmare all second half) and again Ivanovic’s attempt of a block was pretty half hearted. The third goal was obviously an Ashley Cole error so Rafa can point the blame at someone else for a change.
Obviously Rafa and certain players cocked up big time but credit must go to Big Sam whose substitutions made a brilliant impact. Diame practically put Mata in his pocket and pressed us high up as we sat deep and Taylor added an attacking threat wide to get the balls in the box for the aerial threat. Could be fair to say the outcome of the match was because of 2 different impacts by the managers.
What I didn’t understand was why we sat so deep. Sometimes I think managers can try and be too clever and get everything coming off all at once. Rafa, while not having the game won, tried to have us save energy and coast through the second half and it backfired. Until the game is won, and especially if you’re playing pretty well, there isn’t much point in changing the game unless you have to adapt to your opponents, which again he failed to do when Diame and Taylor was introduced. His substitutions were ridiculous. Hazard was key to how Rafa wanted to play on the break but he took him off and then he removed our best player on the day (Moses) for Marin, who to be fair did alright, but still needs time to feel his way into the league.
We can all sit here and say what a shit manager Rafa is, and in my opinion, he is, but the players went missing too when they were needed. There appears to be very little leadership in the side and it will be a much welcome sigh of relief when JT and Frank return to rile the players up on the pitch. The heads dropped big time after the second goal. With the players, I think the key ones are low in confidence because of how results went in November. It has been a while since we won a game and the players may have that anxiety of not knowing how to see a game out when its needed. I think this has increased by the change of manager…perhaps they are having trouble dealing with a completely different style of football. Last season, we were a defensive team…then at the start of this season a largely attacking team…no we’re back to being defensive and more negative. I feel this is where the balance is not being struck and it’s cost us. Some look lost at times and this is what I meant earlier when I referred to players looking confused. We’ve got Roman and co to thank for that. Nice one Roman.
This is a dark time at Chelsea at the moment. We have a manager that nobody likes (and for good reason), the players are low on confidence all over the pitch and there is unrest between fans with different opinions on supporting the team and towards the owner, manager and board. All we can do as fans is support the team and I think we did that brilliantly at West Ham yesterday and baring the joke on the pitch I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere and it was a great laugh. Is the animosity towards Rafa from us fans affecting the team? I don’t think so (although having played in front of crowds and speaking to footballers, they tend to pick up more of a “vibe” then hear anything in particular) and the players know that to change an atmosphere they have to perform. There is only so much us fans can do and if we could go on and put a tackle in, score a goal or make a sub then we would…. but we can’t.
I know it feels like things can’t get any worse, but it could. We are still in the top 4, could advance in the Champions League and could be world champions in 2 weeks time.
Lets just pray that Rafa doesn’t cock up anything else, gets everyone motivated and we kick on from here…if not, the least you can do Roman is sack him.
Keep your head up guys and girls. The rollercoaster is just about to begin.
UTC
By Liam Hawkes
(@LiamHawkes2)
