The most meaningful West London derby in many seasons. This is not the truest test for the players morale and Avram but at least this is the premier league and this is at Stamford Bridge. Being the first home match since the departure of the Special One, this would be a full house with all kinds of chants, songs and demonstrations. The incredible record of unbeatable home run is at stake and the last thing we want is this record being broken in the derby at this stage.

Before we proceed, hats off this Chelsea team which has found 8 of their players in the 55 shortlisted players for the FIFPro awards this time. The Official Chelsea website says:

The eight Blues, which contains 55 players on the shortlist, are goalkeeper Petr Cech, defenders Ricardo Carvalho, Ashley Cole and John Terry, midfielders Michael Essien, Frank Lampard and Claude Makelele, and forward Didier Drogba. Skipper John Terry has been named in the FIFPro team for the last two season.

Only Real Madrid with nine players have more nominations than ourselves, where fellow Barclays Premier League clubs Manchester United (seven), Liverpool (two), Arsenal and Tottenham (one each) also have players proposed.

Second paragraph is more interesting! No Fabregas and rightfully so!!

Nothing’s changed. Chelsea are charged by the FA for not controlling the players. Now no one opens a mouth and lashes back at the FA. That’s fine. Actually, Terry must have got banned for trying to pull the red card from referee’s hand. He gets a lucky let-off.

Back to the match. Fulham is not in the best of form. Yet to win an away game this season and could not maintain a clean sheet home and away. And we’ve just come off from a match which saw 15 of our 16 shots hit target. We should score for sure but I’m not too convinced about our defence yet. You can bet your fortune on JMC’s defence and how they’re going to simply nullify any attack. That’s when scoring 2 goals against Chelsea was quite an achievement. Nowadays, we not just conceding good goals but also silly goals. This would stop only when we have a near-permanent back four for a series of games.

Like it or not, Ben Haim seems to have become the first choice centre back, in Ricardo’s absence. Alex must feel that he was hard done by. Ben Haim, reportedly, was not quite quick and lacked positional sense which put his colleagues under pressure. Terry is a shadow of a player that he was. He is still the leader, the inspirational captain and the engine of the Chelsea defence but he is not at his best in his primary responsibilities.

[video]http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/1HW3fmn9p7TbplECO[/video]

It is under these circumstances, we have chosen to play a more attacking game. If you had seen the Kalou goal in the Hull match, you could see that there were 5 Chelsea players (2 midfielders and 3 forwards) in the Hull’s penalty area causing chaos in their defence. That makes the attack decisive and effective but if we lose the ball in such situations, would our defence be able to cope up the counterattack? Allright that was Hull City, but my question is having the other opponents in mind. English teams are always good in counterattack and that’s quite a major source of goals in English football. And we are talking about Kalou, SWP, Joe Cole, Sheva etc who now have the reputation of losing possession in the wrong areas.

I’m all game for this kind of attacking football but in that case we should no longer be bother about conceding goals and not attach too much importance to the clean sheets. What this could mean is, we should get more of 3-2s and 3-1s than the solid 1-0s. Also this would mean that once we score, say in the 55th minute or so, we would still continue to attack, we won’t substitute attacking players for defensive players, we would simply go for the second and third goal and we won’t try to shut the game down but kill the game.

Avram said after the Hull match:

I didn’t expect that in a few days we play like this but I like very much the goals we scored today. All were from combinations of passes between many players. Some of the movement and some of the passes were quick with good finishing after good movement. On this base we can continue. Our target is to score many goals. Of course we want to score as many as possible, but I cannot guarantee it.

We have the players to do these things but such transformations would take time. You know from Arsenal, how painful the transition period can be. If this transition is going to result in few more draws or defeats before Christmas, then we are out of the title race. I believe that the quality of the teams from English league is much superior to the ones in Italy and Spain. With all teams getting stronger and stronger, we are going to rue about every lost point.

I’ll be curious to see how Avram responds in the next match after losing points that he should have won. I guess we are in a state of confused objectives. We have to make up our mind about what we need from this season – change of playing style or titles. You may want both but I don’t think it is that easy to manage for in this season and that requires a masterclass (Jose had just started the transformation) and Avram is not the likely one to make it.

In short, what I’m trying to say is that fans asking for a different playing style should also have the patience and maturity to wait from the transition to evolution. In football fraternity, unfortunately, the current band (this decade) of Chelsea fans have this poor reputation of being very fickle minded, impatient and immature, which I can’t completely deny. And, for the records, I don’t want a different playing style for Chelsea. I’m happy as it is. I’m not buying any garbage from anyone about Chelsea’s playing style. I like it and it stops there for me. I don’t care what my Arsenal supporting cousin thinks and what my Man Utd supporting boss says. The Jose’s title winning seasons were the best football I have seen. I liked it more than Barca and Milan seasons. Jose’s third season was simply intelligent and a brilliant case study for football management.

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Happy returns to Sheva, playing (I hope) on his 31st birthday. It’s a tough choice between Kalou and Pizarro to partner Sheva. I went for Kalou as he has just found the net twice. I’d go for Alex in place of Ben Haim and would give 90 minutes to Wayne Bridge. This would be Mikel’s second suspended match.

This match against Fulham should give us some clear idea about what Avram wants to achieve. Is he going to go for a safe three points or try to rip them apart at the Bridge to announce his arrival and win some fans. Unfortunately for him, not getting beat at the Bridge not something special as we’ve anyway not lost a league game at home for the last three seasons. Let’s see if he has anything under the magic hat. 3-1 anyone?

[tags]Chelsea, Fulham, Derby, West London, Jose Mourinho, Avram Grant, Shevchenko, Kalou, Wayne Bridge, Stamford Bridge, premier league[/tags]