A RELIABLE STRIKER
Diego Costa, like Fabregas, had a fantastic start to his Chelsea career. It was a pairing that hit the ground running with the former-Arsenal midfielder finding Costa in the box time and time again. Costa is a very good striker but is he a great striker? Is he the best we can get? At least he isn’t Fernando Torres, but when you look at three factors I think we can do better: potency, reliability and fitness.
Costa scored a lot of goals in the first half of 2014/15 and a reasonable amount in the second half. I don’t believe Costa is as great a striker as many fans would like to believe. He’s a very good striker but I’d have preferred us to have purchased another ‘Grade A’ striker in the summer like Gonzalo Higuain, Edinson Cavani or Karim Benzema.
When you look at the subject of reliability you have to question his temperament which has already cost us this season. When you’re in a battle like we are, you need calm soldiers with cool heads, Costa does not fit that mould. Instead, he matches his manager’s demeanour of ‘the world is against me’ and tries to start a fight with every opposing player. The Gabriel incident was always coming and while he was not entirely to blame on that day he has been very lucky before. Personally I’d prefer to keep eleven players on the pitch. Finally, there’s fitness and we know that he rarely seems to be 100%. The injury prone striker is often carrying a knock. A summer purchase of a striker would have seriously helped.
STAR PLAYERS NOT PERFORMING
Now I’m not saying that all our defeats stem from Ivanovic playing badly, Terry forcing us the play deep and Costa’s temperament. They are all factors that contribute heavily but the most worrying issue is the form of star players like Eden Hazard, Nemanja Matic and Oscar. Matic is probably my favourite player at the club, our unsung hero who last season often won the ball and provided it to Fabregas for all those assists.
This season though he’s had some woeful performances and Hazard has been no better. Almost as unheard of as the league champions playing so badly is the reigning player of the year not performing. He’s been seemingly absent and uninterested in games which is the strongest example to me that Mourinho has lost the support of a number of players.
Maybe for Hazard it’s because he is constantly asked to support the defence when he is the kind of player that needs the free licence allowed to Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. You don’t see those two helping out their full backs very often that’s for sure. We should have the playing personnel to win matches and titles in style like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona yet we so cautiously that our aim is to get a goal and defend it like mad. In my opinion, we as fans deserve better than that. We not only want to win but we want to be entertained as well. For that players like Hazard and Oscar need the licence to roam.
Willian, on the other hand, has been a revelation. I spoke with a number of fans last season and over the summer who like me, thought that he was not the answer on the right wing and would be better in a central attacking role but we’ve been proven wrong. In a season of failures, he has been a true success.
REPLACE NOT IMPROVE
I don’t believe we really improved with our summer deals. Asmir Begovic came in for Petr Cech to be Thibaut Courtois’ understudy yet has found himself thrust into the limelight thanks to the Belgian’s injury problems. The arrival of Falcao replaced Didier Drogba who departed for MLS and had that been the Colombian that Monaco paid just over £40m for in 2013 it would be a great move but since then he’s not the same player at all.
He failed at Monaco, flopped at United and is now already rumoured for a January exit. Baba Rahman replaced Filipe Luis but is not yet good enough for the first team it seems. Pedro was brought in from Barcelona to replace Juan Cuadrado and was an initial success but since then his light has faded. Kenedy has probably been the only player who cannot be seen as a replacement for someone else and seems to be one of the few successes of the season.
A team as good as Chelsea should not win the title and then just buy Begovic, Baba, Pedro, Djilobodji, Kenedy and loan Falcao though. We should be looking at the stars of today as well as tomorrow. It’s no surprise that City are top of the table after adding Raheem Sterling and former-Chelsea player Kevin De Bruyne to their squad. Those are the kind of purchases we should be making and I hope the next manager can liaise better with the transfer panel to bring the biggest names to the club like we deserve.
