Chelsea Fan View: Have Chelsea and Conte got their Mojo back?

Chelsea chalked up their fourth win in a row against Swansea at the weekend. It perhaps should have been more routine than it seemed.

Swansea, battling for their Premier League lives are facing imminent relegation. Chelsea went 1-0 up after 4 minutes. So far so good, but the expected trouncing just didn’t happen and 1-0 it stayed leaving a nerve jangling last 10 minutes where Chelsea appeared to hang on for the victory.

In many ways the match embodied the frustration Chelsea supporters have felt all season. There was an air of familiarity about Chelsea’s inability to kill weaker opposition off. Antonio Conte hit the nail squarely on the head with his post-match remarks saying: “Our top scorer has scored only 12 goals. And if your best scorer has scored only 12 goals it means it is very difficult to fight for something this season. This is the reality, the stats speak very well.”

Well, he has a point, but Chelsea’s apparent malaise this season is not simply down to his misfiring strikers. There are many reasons why Chelsea’s season has continued to frustrate.

Uppermost among them is that somewhere along the line Antonio Conte and the players seemed to lose their ‘mojo’. Whether it was down to complacency; lack of squad depth and quality; injuries or a collective sulk due to the rumoured political squabbles between the manager and the Board I guess we will never know.

But having seen Chelsea win the title last season playing some superb football in the process, anything less this season was bound to be a disappointment.

The win against Swansea is a case in point. We all know that no matches in the Premier League are a given. It is far too competitive for that. Swansea were always going to put up a fight, by any means necessary.

Perhaps had Chelsea still been challenging and in with a sniff of winning the title then a gritty 1-0 win away to Swansea might have been seen in a more positive light. In that situation it would have been all about the win and the three points. Out of the title race and most probably out of the race for a top four finish, then the three points seem less important that a decent fluid performance.

It is a peculiar dichotomy but perhaps underlines the frustration supporters feel about Chelsea’s season.

The win against Swansea leaves Chelsea just two points behind Spurs. If Spurs contrive to lose two of their remaining fixtures and Chelsea wins their remaining three then it will be Chelsea who finish in the top four of the Premier League and not Spurs. Spurs have lost two and drawn one of their last three matches. Chelsea has won their last four. Chelsea, it could be argued are the form team.

Personally, I think the Goddess of football is messing with us and the chances of Spurs losing two of their last four matches is highly unlikely, but while there is life there is hope.

Of course the fact that there is any hope at all underlines the frustration with Chelsea’s campaign this season. Had we not lost to Watford and Bournemouth and dropped points against the likes of West Ham then Chelsea’s place in the top four would have been secured long ago. It would be Spurs putting the pressure on rather than the somewhat unsavoury role reversal we are experiencing now.

There is a feeling of too little too late.

However, it should not go unnoticed that Chelsea has won four matches on the spin, all away it should be said, for the first time this season since the 12^th September. The 6-0 thumping of Qarabag in the Champions’ League coming after successive wins against Spurs away, Everton at home and Leicester away.

Last season, after a very poor start, Chelsea went on a thirteen match winning run after the 3-0 defeat away to Arsenal. This run of from pretty much secured the title.

Could it be that with four wins in a row that Chelsea could go on a similar winning run to the end of this season? If they do they will win the FA Cup and depending on Spurs well-known ability to implode might just scrape in to the top four.

That would put a very different complexion on this frustrating season.

The win against Swansea was Conte’s 50th as Chelsea manager and he is the third quickest behind Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho to achieve this feat. It appears that both Chelsea and Antonio Conte might just have got their ‘mojo’ back, if not their swagger.

Whether a winning run to the end of the season will be enough to save Conte’s job is a moot point, but it is worth considering that the Antonio Conte of last season, with his mojo and swagger intact, could well be a better option going forward than the rumoured replacements.

David Chidgey @StamfordChidge

David Chidgey presents the award winning Chelsea FanCast podcast which can be heard live every Monday at 19.00 at mixlr.com/chelsea-fancast/ or downloaded from Acast, ITunes, Soundcloud or chelseafancast.com @ChelseaFanCast