Although the festive period is never exactly a time for Christmas pudding and excessive drinking in the world of football, with a heavy schedule and little time to rest, Chelsea may well face a December that makes or breaks their season. The month ahead provides a perfect opportunity for the Blues to mount a significant push in the right direction, whilst at the same time offers plenty of potential banana skins to avoid. Andre Villas-Boas has made no secret of the fact the Chelsea face a tough time to keep their Premier League ambitions alive and that they will have to up their game.
With Chelsea currently lying 5th in the league, in the midst of a closely contested positional battle with the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and recent high-flyers Newcastle, Villas-Boas is keen to string some results together now and keep the gap between them and the front-runners minimal. There haven’t been any major issues with the team and the way they’ve played so far this season, but their apparent inability to get points against the big sides may well be what comes back to haunt them later in the season. Recent losses to Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United earlier in the season highlighted their frailties and uncharacteristic weakness against quality opposition. Upcoming games against Newcastle, Manchester City and Tottenham will be tough tests for Chelsea, but ones they need to rise to if they want to remain in contention for the title.
It’s not just in the domestic games in which Chelsea have been troubled with inconsistency. They could have sailed through their Champions League group had they not drawn with Genk and thrown away the lead against Leverkusen away from home. Now they have left themselves with work to do as they have to avoid defeat to Valencia in the final group game in order to qualify for the knock-out stages. In his own words, “In the Champions League, this standard won’t be enough”, Villas-Boas has recognised the fact that Chelsea need to improve to stay on track to achieve their goals for the season.
For me, one of the most important things for the players to do is stick by their manager, even if the media or fans don’t. This is ultimately what creates a better situation and better team spirit. Particularly under the guidance of Mourinho, they used to set a president for consistent results and being exceedingly difficult to beat at home, a dominance which Chelsea have somewhat lost as of late. They have lost 5 of their last 9 games and don’t appear to have the confidence to go into a run of games on the front foot and progress up the table. Although he had a decent game against Leverkusen, scoring a fine goal, Drogba doesn’t seem to be particularly hungry for goals at the moment, along with Torres who is still misfiring.
After having stated recently that he will probably revert to a 4-3-3 for the game against Newcastle, Villas-Boas obviously doesn’t seem confident with the system and how to get the best out of the players at the moment, who were surprised at the choice of formation against Liverpool. Also on the pitch, he admitted he wants to see more in terms of desire and passion at home. To me it seems that this makes the fast approaching games at home to Valencia and Manchester City the ones where we can look for a turnaround in their attitude and see what they are really made of this season, with the onlooking fans expecting a decent performance.
Another game which seems tricky is the away trip to Tottenham who look like a force to be reckoned with at home this season, but again it will test Chelsea’s belief. If they can take confidence into the last two home games in December, I think they will come out of it in the new year with renewed hope and a great chance of resurrecting their title ambitions. If not, then they may well be in for a turbulent time and a struggle to make the top four. Even so, many people might say that Chelsea are out of the running even this early on with the form of the teams at the top, but as we have seen before, writing them off at this stage would be a naïve move.
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