By Ross Mooring
First, a bit of background on this (although I don’t blame you for scrolling down to the team!). For a long time now I’ve toyed with the idea of rating every player’s performances for an entire season, using my (admittedly subjective) opinions after each match and totting them and averaging out by minutes played – a more accurate reflection than by appearances made.
This year, I got my act together doing weekly ratings for every game as discussed live on our weekly shows. Those who know me (or who have listened to the Fancast over the years!) will know I like a beer or two with my football, which can affect the ratings of 11 to 14 players. With this in mind I rewatched the full 90 minutes of many games this season to ensure “hazy” thinking didn’t cloud results!
To put the ratings into context – forget Football Manager’s inflated expectations of 7/10 being a minimum expectation – you can find my guide to ratings I give out each week here.
Looking back over the entire season, the majority of ratings I gave out were 6s and 7s, meaning nearly every player averaged between 6 and 7 by season’s end.
My 2013-14 Chelsea Team of The Season (4-2-3-1 formation):
Petr Cech – 6.65
Branislav Ivanovic – 6.56
Gary Cahill – 6.84
John Terry – 6.92
Cesar Azpilicueta – 6.81
John Mikel Obi – 6.58
Nemanja Matic – 7.11
Willian – 7.03
Oscar – 6.73
Eden Hazard – 6.99
Samuel Eto’o – 6.70
Substitutes:
Ashley Cole – 6.52
Frank Lampard – 6.53
Andre Schurrle – 6.68
Unsurprisingly, Chelsea’s highest graded area was the defence with John Terry, Gary Cahill and Cesar Azpilicueta all scoring 6.81 or higher. Branislav Ivanovic, despite his low rating, consistently scored 6s and 7s with very few outliers. He didn’t make many mistakes, but was rarely a difference maker going forward, with the Serb’s tally of 3 goals his lowest since 09/10.
Petr Cech suffered from the defence’s excellence to a certain extent as in many games this season – especially at home – the big Czech was rarely tested, limiting his ability to score highly.
The worst performing grouping was in central midfield with none of Frank Lampard, Ramires or John Mikel Obi able to play well on a consistent basis – none breached the 6.60 barrier for the year – while January’s brilliant signing Nemanja Matic (7.11) was restricted to just 17 starts in a Chelsea shirt, less than a third of all of Chelsea’s games. If the Blues can find him a partner in the centre of the park in the summer results should improve further.
Samuel Eto’o (6.70) led an average bunch at centre forward with Fernando Torres (6.39) and Demba Ba (6.35) failing to make much of an impact on a game by game basis. Ba’s low rating is due in part to a small sample size of minutes played – he spent less time on the pitch than Mark Schwarzer – many of which were 20 minute spells in which he had little impact (Spurs and PSG at home apart!).
Behind the frontmen, Eden Hazard and Willian were clearly Chelsea’s most effective attacking players; in Hazard’s case winning a multitude of games on his own while Willian combined his excellent all round game with a high work rate both on and off the ball. Oscar didn’t match those two as he fluctuated between graceful orchestrator and passenger at times, especially in the latter half of the season. Andre Schurrle (6.68) showed promise with several top displays, but also had the odd clunker in his first season at Stamford Bridge.
Mark Schwarzer (6.81 – yes really!) scored very highly, but only played in 12 games, which is too small a sample size to draw any real conclusions from, apart from being a sorely missed reliable number two to Cech. Put it this way, in the matches he played the ageless Aussie only made one mistake, albeit a costly one, against Sunderland at home to finish off our title challenge.
Player of the Season
1. Willian 7.03
2. Eden Hazard 6.99
3. John Terry 6.92
Totting up the results at the end of the year, I was surprised to see Willian top the lot – he did only score 4 goals after all – so digging into his individual game ratings I found that not once had I scored him at 5 or lower. Not once! Combine that level of consistency and his strong run at the end of the season when he displaced Oscar in the starting lineup and was often Chelsea’s main attacking threat and it’s understandable, at least in my eyes, to see how I ended up rating him as my player of the season.
Eden Hazard both started and ended the season below his extremely high standards. Being dropped for the Schalke home game in October after his ill-thought out sortie to Lille seemed to spark an incredible run of form which lasted all the way through to March. In that period I rated him at 8 or higher – including two 10s – on nine occasions as he tore opponent after opponent to shreds. As I noted in my weekly blogs he quite often goes through games making only a handful of minor errors while on the ball (and Hazard receives possession a lot) and it is this standard of play which has probably led me to underrate him on occasion. He’s by far the most purely talented player at the club since Gianfranco Zola, but the Belgian certainly has room for improvement.
Gary Cahill (6.84) and Cesar Azipilicueta (6.81) finished just behind John Terry (6.92) in 4th and 5th, respectively. Terry himself turned back the clock as he marshalled the defence from the kick off in August right through to the end of the season. Similarly to Willian, Terry recorded just one rating of 5 all season long with his rueful own goal in the defeat at Crystal Palace. That shows just how few major errors he made during the course of the season in which he played as much football as Petr Cech by comparison. Not bad for a supposedly past it central defender with little in the way of pace.
Interestingly, as you might have noticed from the team of the season, Nemanja Matic outscored everyone with an overall rating of 7.11. The big Serbian only played in 19 games (too small a sample size to compare to the rest of the squad) but he quickly demonstrated just what the Blues’ midfield had been missing and his performances – away to Man City and Liverpool and at home to Spurs and Arsenal – were one of the key factors in Chelsea’s title challenge.
I’ll be back over the coming days and weeks with a detailed breakdown of every player, looking back at their best (and worst) performances of the season, adding in my thoughts on their attributes and how they fit into the Chelsea team going forward.
So there you go. Who was your player of the season? Please leave your comments in the box below.
