Chelsea Fan View: Suffering With and Without the Ball

Suffering without the ball is a much used phrase from Chelsea manager, Antonio Conte. It first came to our attention prior to the Champions’ League clash against Barcelona.

In his imperfect English, the Italian perfectly conveyed the difficulty of playing a team who are expert in retaining possession. In English vernacular we would perhaps say that Barcelona would give Chelsea the ‘run around’, hence the suffering, as Chelsea would be chasing shadows all night unable to win the ball from more skillful opponents.

In retrospect, Conte’s words were prophetic. Looking at the season as a whole, they become even more so.

But what most Chelsea supporters cannot fathom is how and why a Newcastle team who had just lost four matches in a row could make Chelsea suffer without the ball so comprehensively in the last match of the Premier League season.

Chelsea were quite simply not at the races, Blaydon or otherwise. But worse, they seemed disinterested and passive, creating very little up front and always looking vulnerable in defence. A Newcastle team who Chelsea perhaps wrongly presumed would already be on the beach were bang up for it. Chelsea was not and deservedly lost 3-0.

The fact that Conte made eight changes to the team that drew to Huddersfield on top of the six changes he had made after the victory against Liverpool the previous Sunday hardly helped matters. What was he thinking? There was still the slimmest of chances that Liverpool might lose to Brighton and a Chelsea win would ensure Champions’ League football next season. The minimum requirement would have been that the Chelsea players showed some fight. Instead they capitulated, not for the first time this season, against weaker opposition on paper.

In fact, so limp was Chelsea’s performance that they managed to suffer with the ball as well as without it. But the man on the touch line appeared to be suffering even more. Antonio Conte appeared a shadow of the man Chelsea supporters fell in love with as he led the team to a second League title in three seasons. That version of Conte exuded passion and enthusiasm, this season’s model looks like he’s had the life and soul crushed out of him.

No wonder the players look so lethargic and hapless when they have a leader on the touchline that looks like he’d rather be somewhere else. And therein lies the problem. It appears to have been inevitable for the last few months, arguably more, that Antonio Conte will be leaving Chelsea at the end of the season. Whether this is true or not we will find out soon enough, but it is inconceivable that this has not transmitted to the players.

Of course, it is the supporters who suffer most. This season has felt so disappointing in part due to the contrast with last season. A title win should be a catalyst for progression to greater things. Instead Chelsea has faced a repeat of the boom-bust cycle so typical of the Club in recent times.

Furthermore, the suffering is enhanced by a sense of powerlessness. Supporters are merely observers of the chaos that plays out before them. But, they do not sulk or surrender meekly. They turn up with 100% commitment like the 3,000 Chelsea supporters who made the 500 mile round trip to Newcastle on Sunday, who could hardly believe their eyes at what they were witnessing.

Chelsea’s players may have suffered without the ball on more than one occasion this season, and for whatever reason the manager has clearly been suffering too; but this is nothing compared to the suffering the supporters have endured this season.

Antonio Conte and the players have one more chance to mitigate this suffering when they face Man Utd in the FA Cup final on Saturday.

Who knows, maybe Conte’s multitude of changes and the players passive performance were all part of some master plan to lull Utd and former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho in to a false sense of security. Chelsea supporters are under no illusion that winning the Cup Final next weekend will be an uphill task.

If Chelsea can pull off a victory and take home the FA Cup for the eighth time in their history, then the suffering endured by the supporters this season will dissipate and they can go off for the summer recess with smiles on their faces. If not then the suffering will fester throughout the off-season.

Let’s hope that Jose Mourinho and Man Utd do not make the Chelsea players and the Chelsea supporters suffer without the ball on Saturday.

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