after the opening weekend, your correspondant wrote about chelsea:
big phil is... absolutely, positively overrated.... and it is chelsea that is more likely to decline, with lampard and ballack both the wrong side of 30 & didier drogba increasingly injury prone. deco is truly one of my favourite players in world football - i thought barca were absolutely crazy to sell him - but it is difficult to imagine he will play as he did on sunday, week in, week out, in his first season in the premiership, at the age of 31 (as he will be in about a week's time). also, when you look at the squad - ridiculously overloaded with central midfielders and strikers - you can imagine them getting bogged down at times, which is exactly the reason they have been unsuccessfully chasing robinho.
alright, so it is a bit self-indulgent. but the reason i am quoting that is not to demonstrate my prescience or to laugh at the stunningly stupid pairing of hansen and shearer on match of the day (who both tipped chelsea to win the title after their destruction of pompey, but to illustrate why big phil can't be blamed for all of chelsea's ills.
big phil turned up at chelsea in the summer, faced with a squad in decline. for all that has been made of avram grant's achievements - a title only out of reach on the last day of the season, a penalty shoot out loss to manchester united - this cannot be in doubt; drogba was beginning to pick up the niggling injuries that would see him unfit for the bulk of this current season, claude makelele was clearly no longer the player he once was, and the squad had seen its incisors removed, the departures of damien duff and arjen robben (in particular) not properly compensated for. but it was a squad capable of overwhelming teams with its sheer physicality, and to grant's credit he seemed to maintain, on the pitch at least, the kind of fearsome, inextinguishable warrior spirit that made them such a redoubtable force under jose mourinho. it was some last hurrah.
this perilous decline cannot be blamed on grant or mourinho. i was often a vocal critic of the portuguese's transfer policy, especially early on, but as time past you began to doubt the accountability of the manager for those matters; as the cadre of advisors and staff multiplied, rumours swirled over many of the moves, with numerous players allegedly purchased on the insistence of someone other than mourinho. of course, what further clouds the subject is the obligatory press conference soundbites from jose, welcoming such luminaries as andrei shevchenko with the identical routine of acclaim and praise. however, we know that the transfer policy at stamford bridge has long been one of minimisation, since the fateful summer that brought claudio pizarro and florent malouda - both were clear symbols of the club thinking it could do things on the cheap as ambramovich tried to ween it from his chequebook.
this has continued ever since - nicolas anelka, for example, was an ill-thought panic buy, but remained cheaper than someone with genuine quality; tal ben-haim was someone never good enough and is now, more appropriately, at sunderland; belletti, despite the occasional wonder-goal, was the type of declining, flawed player you almost never see alex ferguson signing - and was alive and well in the scolari reign. mineiro was signed, as a free-agent, to back up mikel, and even when they clearly needed a wide midfielder (especially given joe cole's unfortunate recent injury) all they could muster was the loan signing of a player who will probably need a good deal of that short period to adapt to the premier league. deco arrived for £8m, a truly bizarre signing not only because of the multitude of options chelsea had in the middle, but because he was signed to a mere two-year deal (on massive wages, one presumes) despite the obvious fact he too would need time to acclimatise to the premier league.
the exception of course was jose bosingwa, who is looking less and less worth his £16.2m transfer fee with every passing game; combine him with deco and you have a thoroughly disappointing summer's business at stamford bridge. it can be presumed bosingwa was a recommendation of big phil, given his status as portugal manager and that the decision to recruit a right-back ahead of a winger was so counter-intuitive it must have been with a tactical plan in mind. and this is where the criticism of scolari begins.
scolari set out his chelsea team very much like his world cup winning brazil side from 2002 - the full backs providing width, what looked like three centre backs (with mikel dropping back from his nominal defensive midfield position), and then anything between 3 or 4 central attack-minded midfielders. in theory, this is a flexible formation that allows midfield runners to attack from bewildering angles; in practice it is a stultifying set up that, countered with ease by the premier league's better tacticians after early successes. it is something that reflects badly on big phil, whose main achievement, that world cup, is now rightly being put into proper context.
that brazil side wasn't particularly good, and in beating england, turkey and an awful german side from the quarter finals onward they demonstrated very little to suggest otherwise. against sides of any repute, in a world cup not marred by awful officiating, tactical ineptitude and (primarily) european exhaustion, it would not have been a world cup winning team. of course, given the disproportionate and inaccurate importance placed on international football, this triumph vaulted big phil into the upper echelon of world managers. his subsequent reign at the helm of the portuguese national team was characterised by respectful failure. his previous successes in brazilian club football were built less on that most spurious of concepts "samba football" (or whatever the hell people call it), but physicality and efficiency.
his pedigree most certainly did not befit his reputation. at chelsea he appeared out of his depth, tactically outclassed and incapable of handling the egos at work in the dressing room. the anecdote about how he departed the game against middlesbrough early, missing two late chelsea goals that won them the game, just so he could pick up his son from st pancras, speaks of a manager not really capable of leading a side; the instant and persistant pursuit of brazilian and portuguese players of a man uncomfortable with the league of nations style squad assembled at chelsea, pining for safety in what he knew best.
but he was hamstrung by the lack of planning at chelsea. the sporadic splurges had created an imbalanced squad, haemorraghing money as the "all-star" construction lead to an unsustainably high wage bill. too many big name on wages that were too high; not enough of the effective middle-class, the park ji-sungs and wes browns to fill out the squad, and too few of the dynamic youngsters, the da silva twins or the entire arsenal reserve side, to provide hope or gentle evolution as the inevitable decline of first-teamers set in. for all big phil's faults, he was still having to play florent malouda on the wing, because he had no alternatives. and as for the people that would ask about drogba and anelka together, i would ask how you envisage those two playing together? and in a central pair, who is manned on the flanks and which of the lampard/mikel/ballack/deco bottleneck do you dislodge?
of course, a victory over near-bankrupt championship relegation candidates watford restores a degree of false hope - chelsea won with drogba and anelka together! the fact is, these two are an unlikely couple and will almost certainly struggle to tessalate. but even though scolari's failure to motivate the loathsome didier drogba isn't exactly his fault - the ivorian couldn't be more wilfully childish if he tried - if he does come into form then chelsea, and whoever is in the team, automatically get more effective. if the battering ram comes back, chelsea will improve. ultimately though, this is not a side that will recover to win the title; they simply are not good enough. and to blame phil for that is harsh in the extreme.
No comments:
Post a Comment