Let’s not beat around the bush. We’re not picking up the points. We are not playing good football. Our football is neither beautiful nor intelligent. Luckily for us, our rivals are as inconsistent as we have been. Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal have all been drawing and losing matches. But I need to admit that they play much better and deserve to call themselves unlucky after most of their draws/defeats. The matches where we have been dropping points, there has been no question of luck, it’s sheer under-performance.

My team is no longer fighting like they did before. They no longer play like their lives depended on that game. Teams no longer fear Chelsea. Don’t think I’m trying to say that we have a divine right win all the matches and end up with 114 points. To all those who say that you were around when Chelsea were shite, good for you. Flash news: Times have changed. The club spends more than a million pounds per week on player wages alone. Do the results and the way we play correspond to the million pounds per week wages?

The Chelsea team had more self respect and a siege mentality. When we were hurt, we hit them back as a group. When we lost or drew, we cam back like a wounded animal. Chelsea’s wrath used to be too much to handle. Opponents may win or draw but cannot dominate Chelsea like they are doing now. Attack or defence, we normally have the game under our control. At their will, this team would attack or defend. Defend because we want to or we can afford to. Attack because we want to and we can. Believe it or not, we’ve seen the mid-tablers dominate us this season. We’ve become lot more subdued and submissive. We lack self confidence big time.

Do you think all our players would step into the Bridge thinking, ‘okay there, three points in the bag’? No way. Unfortunately, there are no regulation wins anymore. Earlier, you could look at the fixtures list for the next month or two and fairly predict the number of points Chelsea would collect. I can’t do that anymore. Which of these places would West Brom prefer to go this week and why? Anfield, Emirates, Old Trafford, Villa Park or Stamford Bridge? Don’t tell me Arsenal or Villa have a better squad than Chelsea.

Win or lose, how do we play is all that matter to me. I hate to see Chelsea come up with one subdued performance after the other. The Chelsea I know plays best when the opposition scores a goal or gets us a red card. Truly. Because, those were taken personally by the players and they wanted to prove a point. The team’s aggression has certainly come down by a few notches. I will put any of these things on the availability or non-availability of any players. Having a Robinho will change the match with an assist or a goal. but why would we need Robinho to play with more aggression and ruthlessness. In football, you have three key attributes – mental attributes, physical attributes and skill attributes. It’s possible that there is a highly skilled player but he is low on mental or physical attributes. We have a scoring example in front of us.

There could be players with high mental and physical attributes but with relatively low skill attributes. Someone like a Roy Keane comes to mind. These are players who would come with a prefix of ‘gritty’ rather than ‘skillful’. Someone like a Robben is high on mental and skill attributes but low on physical attributes. Any football team is bound to have players on various levels when it comes to these attributes. The first thing normally a coach does is to ensure that the mental attributes are taken care off. The physical side is always under care with the finess regime. The skill side is also under care with the training ground practices. Also, players of a top European club should be fairly skillful or skillful enough to carry out your plans for three points.

The mental attributes are the ones where the coach/manager needs to spend a lot of time on. See, these players are also humans. They might also go through all the instances of confidence blocks, depression, lack of self belief, ability to work with a team and all that. As the manager, Scolari or anyone should make them believe that they are going to be champions. If Scolari comes to the press and says that we are going to champions this season, it might sound arrogant but at the same time he would subtly put the pressure on the players to come up with the goods. Or he would have really made the players believe that it is possible after all. At the mom the conent, the team and the players do not have the confidence or belief. By bringing on Bridge on the 87th minute at a 0-0 scoreline, Scolari is not sending the right messages to the players. One is, he says that a draw is a good, acceptable result with just 5 mins to go. Another is, he says to the players, I don’t think you’re gonna score and win, at least I’ll stop you from conceding one.

I’ve said this too before. If you go for 3 points there are chances you might end with zero too. If a team like Chelsea goes for just 1 point, more often than not, they can get it. It’s upto the managers and players on whether they play for three points or one point. Also, if Liverpool had beaten Arsenal, we might have gone for all three points. That’s not the right mentality. We don’t want to be on par with Liverpool. We should try to put some daylight between us and Liverpool. This is a league where we should be leading the chasing pack by about 8 to 10 points, if we had taken our chances.

It’s quite easy to say we need new players. When we were very much in the race for all competitions (of which I think we won two finally), Roman did not sanction any new purchased in January. I don’t see why he has to do now too. Because, we have a great squad. How come we were notching all these 4-0 and 5-0 in the first quarter of the season and are now struggling to score and win at home? If I were Roman, my question would be whether I have got the best out of the players that we have already? Otherwise, I’m not buying any new players. I cannot buy new players just to make the job of my coach easy. If I give you all and more, why would I pay Scolari 6 million pounds a year? Some of the poor results we have got this season has nothing to do with the squad.

At least AG can claim himself unlucky because he was appointed in September and could not have had a say in the transfers. Scolari was appointed in early June but he too charge on the 1st of July. He had two full months of open transfer window at his disposal. Forget about the Robinho transfer. He wanted Robinho and we messed up the deal. Assuming we had Robinho and he injured himself in the first week and ruled himself our for 4 months, is this how we would be playing? Scolari was fine with retaining Malouda and Kalou. He had faith in them. He had a chance to offload them and he did not. So they become his players. Scolari chose to strengthen the already strong midfield with Deco. That was his choice. Why didn’t he strengthen the forwards? Why didn’t he buy a winger (apart from

Robinho) instead of adding Deco to the list of Lampard, Ballack, Essien, Mikel, Makelele, Belletti, Sidwell, Joe Cole, some of whom he had dispatched off. Bring in two more players. But that is not the solution. That is certainly not the solution. We would not have resolved the problem unless the mentality of the players and the team is sorted out. The teams should refuse to accept a draw or a defeat. A team would accept a draw as a good result only when they think they have played well. The underlying mentality should be that no matter how well we play, a draw is not an acceptable result. That’s how champions think. I feel sad to say that we are not playing like champions. I hope things do improve in the second half of the season.

Anyway, the question of the day is ‘has Chelsea become weaker under Scolari’? Start your response with a YES or a NO and go about explaining why? Keep this a very matured discussion based on ideas, opinions and logic.

Has Chelsea become ‘weaker’ under Scolari?

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