Advertisement

Fool Me Twice

Chelsea 4 - 0 Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Zouma, Willian, Cahill, and Oscar scored today. So the performance must’ve been pretty good, right? Especially when you consider that Tel Aviv were down to ten men for a majority of the game, 4-0 sounds reasonable.

The truth is that Chelsea were lazy, entitled, unfocused, and appallingly mediocre.

The piece I wrote previous to this mentioned how goals can only come from set-pieces for Chelsea, and three of the four did. The goal for Oscar was from open play, and I think the last time an open play goal like that was scored by Chelsea was against (guess who?) Tel Aviv.

Sloppy passes straight to the opposition and long balls over the top; is this what we’ve been reduced to? If you consider the amount of international caps and years of playing experience at the professional level and cross reference them with the statistics of this season, you’d have a number smaller than the odds of Ivanovic being named Player of the Year.

It was infuriating to watch until we were three-nil up. And in reality it was a summation of this season: there’s nothing to play for. There’s all this back and forth of the players and the manager and former stars and whoever has an opinion saying how they “have faith in this” and “have faith in that.” This team has so much faith in so many different things, they forget that there has to be some sort of concerted effort made in tandem with that wonderful faith.

How has this continued this long? To call yourself a professional footballer means that you maintain a mentality of giving your all against any opposition, no matter if you’re the favorite or not. That’s what 19 of the 20 teams in the Premier League possess in spades: confidence.

Against ten men this was an even match. That is pathetic, but true. Chelsea were their own biggest enemy. Until Willian’s stunning free kick, the best shot on target was a bullet of a headed back pass from Azpilicueta to Begovic. It was just shocking from every part of the pitch.

So if Chelsea behave lazily when they know they’re the favourites, how will they perform against Tottenham on the weekend?

And make no mistake, Tottenham are the favourites, by a country mile.

In my opinion, there is no better team in the league at the moment than Tottenham. They are the youngest, fastest, and cleverest squad and I expect a masterclass in teamwork that Jose would do well to take notes from.

I don’t like to do future predictions but at White Hart Lane I am expecting a loss. A bad one.