When Scolari was appointed as Chelsea coach, there was a widespread feeling of relief more than happiness. The fact that Avram was not a fan favourite did help Felipao as he was accepted instantly by most fans. Of course, he had this thing called pedigree which is why there were hardly anyone who objected his appointment. Over the last 5 months, we’ve seen quite a bit about Scolari. Now you know what Scolari is capable of, what he does and what he does not. You should have a fair idea.

My assessment of Scolari is that he has done a great job so far but his job is far from complete yet. If the press has to be believed he came in with some specific objectives than targets. As such, there were also soft but important objectives along with the hard objectives of winning the titles. The soft objectives could be improving the public and press image of Chelsea, keeping Chelsea off the news, bringing in some amount of acceptability for the club and the team from a ‘millionaire’s plaything’ mindset. He’s doing rather fine on these counts. He can be measured on his hard objectives only by the end of the season or as and when we get eliminated from competition after competition. Or when you start seeing the symptoms for the same.

We are winning. We are on top. We have an near unassailable goal difference. That’s all nice to hear. When you realise that a team can get 85 points in the league and still may not be champions (Chelsea last season), you see that we need something extra to be champions. Under Scolari we have been playing pretty football when we’re allowed to and frustrating football when we’re pushed to the wall. This is not really champions stuff. Champions don’t get pushed or they don’t get out-thought. There are two schools of thought when it comes to football (a) to win at any costs, including your image (b) to win in a certain method or style. In the former, the way you play is only a means to the end, which is winning. Whereas in the latter, the method or style is as important as the means. That’s when there’s a conflict of interest in the minds of the players on the pitch.

When nothing works, you would take route one and get the job done. But when you’re trying to build a certain image like Felipao is trying to do, players are also mindful of how they play. All the while, under the previous managers, all they had in their mind was a winning mentality. They didn’t care about what anyone wrote or said. When you have just objective, it’s always easier to achieve it, Now, our folks have become a victim of their own side plots. That’s what happens with Arsenal FC too. When they were leading 4-2 against
Tottenham, they could have just kept the ball in possession, or some stupid time wasting near the corner, or played a little deeper or done anything else to protect the lead. But they thought it’s against the image that they have built for themselves. They are not supposed to be wasting time because they think they are the purest football team who play the game in the best spirits. They lost the lead. When Barcelona took a lead against Arsenal in the champions league final in the 80th minute, check how they played.

The dangerous thing about pretty football is, even when you lose you feel like you played great football and you were just unlucky to lose. That’s not healthy. I remember the days when players played like their lives depended on the match. We didn’t care if the opponent was Barcelona or Birmingham. Earlier when we lost point, leave alone losing the match, players felt like they’ve committed a sin. That kind of ownership needs to be back.

Scolari has done very well with the soft objectives. Chelsea now plays in a style which is widely acceptable. There is no bad blood between Chelsea and the other teams. Chelsea is no longer the most written about premier league team in the press. Man City’s rise as the new ‘love to hate’ club has helped him. Scolari has or gained a lot of respect from the fellow managers and players. He never goes around with his tongue-in-cheek. His limited knowledge of English language could be a blessing in disguise. He does not seem to love confrontations. Having seen the extremes in Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant, Felipao is good, reasonable and acceptable personality to be the manager of Chelsea FC. I’d still take a JM type personality any day though!

When it comes to hard objectives, he still has a lot to prove. With the Chelsea squad, even if there is no manager, you’d expect the team win a certain percentage of matches. If you have an average manager, the percentage would improve. If you have a decent/good manager, it improves further. If you have a great/legendary/expensive manager, it’s natural that the expectations are high. We don’t need a Scolari for Chelsea to beat Burnley (alas, we didn’t beat them though). We need Scolari to beat Liverpool (oops, didn’t happen either). Stakes are very high in clubs like Chelsea. If Scolari wins the title, he should stay. If he comes runner-up, we should see what else has he achieved, the so called soft objectives. If he ends up less than runner-up with this Chelsea team, he should go. No other option. Such is the expectation level considering the investment and the quality of the squad.

His team has been mauling the opposition one day and clueless the other day. They have been blowing hot and cold like they’ve never before. Suddenly, when their backs are against the wall, they seem to have forgotten how to bounce back, how to undo the opponent and outsmart them. We seem to go through regular motions and hope that one of our pretty attacks click. In the process we become more and more predictable that a good manager would be able to defend us to death. Earlier, when Chelsea drew a match, I used to say, if we had another 5 more minutes, we would have surely scored a goal or even two. Nowadays, the draws that we have got of late, even if we had played 30 more minutes, we would not have won is the truth. Against Bordeaux last week, at 1-1, at the final whistle, I relieved instead of abusing the referee to end the match ‘so soon’.

Much has been written about Scolari’s lack of plan B. I’d say, to keep trying plan A and activate plan B only after the failure of plan A is very naive in premier league football. You need to have multiple options and use them in a random order to keep the opponents guessing on what could come next. I’ve mentioned before that when you try to play pretty football you don’t play intelligent football. This pretty football is all about the precision in exectution and less about creativity. You keep doing the same type short passing, one-twos and triangles; if you’re once very accurate, you might get a goal. At the same time, you don’t keep the opposition guessing. They know what you’re gonna do next, they just hope that you don’t do it well enough to beat them. I think this is what we’re at.

I had written this earlier – When you play a deep defending team, the important weapons in your armoury can be long shots, long balls and set pieces. Unfortunately, these seems to be the neglected areas in Scolari’s reign. If we get back to form on long shots, long balls and set pieces, you can break any resolute defence – This is still very true. In the premier league, the Chelsea team has the best aerial ability all over the pitch. By insisting that we play the ball on the ground, always, we are negating our own strengths and relieving our
opponents of one killer headache. Can turn out to be pretty, but no way smart.

Scolari has to beat Arsenal on Sunday, for various reasons. Actually, we are in poor form (if you think we should do the double), in a very quiet way. After all, Scolari’s honeymoon period seems to be over. Now, Scolari needs to show that this team has the champions-like consistency and ruthlessness. Interestingly those are the two things we seem to be lacking at the moment – consistency and ruthlessness. To be champions, those are exactly the qualities that we need to have. So, he has some work to do. He has drawn at home with Man Utd and lost at home to Liverpool. Now he has the chance to play the last of the top four teams. In other words, we’ve lost against a best opposition and drawn against the second best opposition. In these lines, we should beat Arsenal.

As we have always seen, it is not difficult to out-think Wenger’s teams. If you get your tactics right and if you have the determination, you’ll get the win against Arsenal because those are two things Arsenal lacks – tactics and determination. I hope Scolari had checked the videos of how Chelsea have dominated Wenger’s Arsenal over the last 4 seasons, even including the 1-0 defeat at Emirates. Also, Arsenal are in a mini-crisis. Actually, a match at Stamford Bridge is the last thing they wanted at this stage. They’ve been very poor on the pitch, there is no unity in the dressing room, no spirit or determination and no winning mentality in them. If Scolari can’t beat this Arsenal team, that should go down as his failure, especially after drawing and losing with Man Utd and Liverpool respectively.

Arsenal have very evident problems with (a) dealing with the aerial balls (b) handling the crosses in the box (c) defending set pieces (d) allowing on-target long shots as there are no/quality defensive midfielders (e) letting in on-target long shots thanks to Almunia (f) handling the opposition’s through the middle attacks (g) holding the ball in the midfield with cricketers like Song, Diaby, Denilson and Eboue. You heard it all here. If any team exploits all these weaknesses, they’re gonna score against Arsenal or even beat them. Chelsea has the specific qualities to take advantage of all these weaknesses.

I’m not going to the micros of which team to play, which formation to play, who should be on the bench and all that. I’m just looking at the macro of us needing a win against Arsenal on Sunday. If we can’t score against a team that now has Silvestre, Gallas and Almunia, we need to take some serious measures in our team. My message to Scolari and the Chelsea team: Just beat them, no matter how.