What on earth has happened to Chelsea F.C over the past few months? Last night in the Champions League quarter-final with Manchester United, they seemed a shadow of the side that emphatically won the double last season and were coasting at the top of the Premier League up until November 2010. Devoid of the attacking threat which saw them break goal-scoring records last season at a canter, the Blues seem to be lacking something, despite having largely the same personnel.
Clearly, the one major difference in personnel is Fernando Torres, more on his arrival later, but Chelsea's dramatic change in fortunes happened a fair while before El Nino turned up at Stamford Bridge. Ironically it was Torres himself, while a Liverpool player, that kicked off the Blues' horrendous run of form when his brace at Anfield consigned Chelsea to a 2-0 defeat. They edged out Fulham 1-0 at home in the next fixture but could then only manage one win in the next ten, in a run which included losing 3-0 at home to Sunderland and going down 1-0 to Wolves at Molineux. So what exactly went so wrong?
Firstly, there were a few injuries to contend with. With John Terry and Alex not ever present, a weakness in Chelsea's squad was exposed. Last summer Ricardo Carvalho and Juliano Belletti were sold and not replaced. With Frank Lampard missing, the decisions to offload Michael Ballack, Deco and Joe Cole and only bring in Ramires and the now-injured Yossi Benayoun perhaps didn't look like completely sound squad management. But this aside, the Chelsea players should have had more than enough firepower to win many of the games they were floundering in.
At St Andrews in late November, Didier Drogba and Florent Malouda laboured hard all game long but lacked the killer instinct of last season as Chelsea went down 1-0 to a side battling relegation. Terry was back soon enough, Branislav Ivanovic has stepped up to the plate and David Luiz has since been brought in to strengthen the defence but that doesn't really seem to be the problem. After all, Carlo Ancelotti's team boast the best defensive record in the division having let in just 25 goals in 30 matches. It is the ability to score match-winning goals that appears to have eluded Chesea.
Last season's Golden Boot winner Drogba only has eleven league goals to his name this year, that's one less than Newcastle midfielder Kevin Nolan, yet he remains the Blues' top scorer. Lampard's lengthy injury absence certainly deprived the team of goals, and the likes of Nicolas Anelka, Ramires, Michael Essien and Yuri Zhirkov haven't been weighing in with as many goals as players in their respective positions could do. Ancelotti proved last season that he has what it takes to manage in England, with a great double success, but his track record in Italy was inconsistent to say the least. Two Champions League successes with Milan were coupled with only one Serie A title across eight seasons at the San Siro. Is it down to the manager that the club are struggling? Potentially.
In late January, just when it seemed like Chelsea were finding goalscoring form again, with 4-0 and 4-2 successes at Bolton and Sunderland respectively, the £50m signing of Torres threw a spanner into the works. Whether it was Ancelotti's choice of signing, or as widely believed, the choice of owner Roman Abramovich is somewhat irrelevant as either way, there was another striker to incorporate into the team. And so far it hasn't worked at all. On Torres' debut, as fate would have it, against Liverpool, he was deployed alongside Drogba, with Anelka playing as a trequartista ahead of a midfield three. This hasn't been seen since, as Ancelotti has toyed with various combinations of a front two, including leaving both Drogba and Anelka on the bench and starting Torres with Salomon Kalou. But no matter what he seems to do, it isn't quite working with Torres. Chelsea's most convincing recent result was the 2-0 victory over Manchester City, but they laboured until Torres and Kalou were replaced by Drogba and Anelka. Chelsea have played a 4-3-3 for most of their recent successes, and Anelka is adaptable enough to play in a wide role. With Torres involved, Ancelotti has been forced to play with two up front each game and it simply isn't working for a team content playing a different formation.
But as I've explained, Chelsea were struggling before Torres joined the club, and my view is that it is down to a major imbalance in the squad. Chelsea seem to have too many experienced players in their starting line-up and not enough youthful energy to learn from and complement the older players. Terry, Ashley Cole, Lampard, Drogba, Anelka, Cech, Essien and Malouda have all been on the scene for a number of years and are very much of the same generation. If you look at the fantastic team that won the Premier League for the first time under Jose Mourinho there was some experience in the shape of Claude Makelele but the likes of Lampard, Terry, Damien Duff, Joe Cole, Drogba and Carvalho were all in their mid-twenties. A few youngsters like Arjen Robben and Glen Johnson complemented this. If you look at Arsenal's 'invincibles' side of 2003/04 they had a similar age spread from the older players (Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires), the mid-range (Thierry Henry, Freddie Ljungberg) and a couple of youngsters (Kolo Toure, Jose Reyes). To keep a squad competitive and fresh, there should be this spread of ages, and it is something that the current Chelsea squad doesn't quite have right. Unless a heroic performance at Old Trafford next week can salvage their season, then there will need to be a major overhaul at Stamford Bridge this summer to usher in a new era of success. Whether Ancelotti will still be there to oversee things remains to be seen...
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