What happened to Michael Essien? The Engine. The Bison. The Rock. I used to think that Michael Essien would never go out of form. He can have his bad days but I thought he’d never go out of form. Even of the entire team is not playing well, you can count on one player giving his best – it was Michael Essien. Of late, he has been wayward, lacking focus and concentration and he’s been like that consistently and by his high standards, you can declare that he’s out of form.

Generally, when Essien has the ball, you can be dead sure that he’s not going to give it away. Even if there are two or three players on Essien, you can pretty much say this with confidence that there would be only two possibilities – he’d send the ball to safety or he’d win a free kick. You can be absoutely sure that only one of these two things will happen. In the recent days, I’ve seen Essien lose the ball. It’s a very unusual sight. It’s like seeing a Petr Cech howler. He doesn’t do that. It’s rare. He is so good that it’s so rare. Michael Essien is similar. He doesn’t do the wrong thing. He is very intelligent as a player, knows his role very well, understand the game situation and contributes accordingly.

Of late, he’s not been doing well. I wonder why. I don’t want to straightaway put the blame on Essien. It could be that his role is changing slightly in the team. These are probably the things that we won’t know watching it from the stands or on TV. It could be that Carlo is telling him to try some new things, try to change the way he’s playing or try to bring more flair to his game or something like that. It is possible that when someone’s undergoing a change or trying to transform themselves, these things would happen and there’d be such a phase.

The bottomline from the Chelsea point of view is that every player contributes to win. It’s not just enough to have the intent, there should be the effort and subsequently the outcome to make all this worthwhile. Anyone who’s picked to play should contribute their bit for a Chelsea win. At any point of time, when we have a defender or a midfielder being out of form, we absolutely need to action on the situation. See I have very very high regards for Essien. It’s not my love for Josh McEachran that makes me say these things about Essien. Regular folks know how highly I rate Essien. It’s just that I feel that Essien is not in the right frame of mind for some reason – may it’s something that’s happening in his personal life, we don’t know.

Purely based on the output on the pitch, I think Essien should be benched. I’ve been convinced about this for many weeks now but I now thought this is now big enough to write a post about it. Michael Essien has this kind of rigidity about his game which suits very well when you have a tactics built around the individual skills and abilities. Jose Mourinho was a master at this. Just give him any team and some time. He can get the best from the team and the makes the whole more than the sum of its parts. Carlo’s style is different. He doesn’t go by individual abilities. He has a philosophy wrto playing football and the players will need to fit into that. Essien as a defensive midfielder might. Essien as an attacking midfielder may not.

Essien is not in the Lampard mould. You don’t see Essien making defence splitting passes (not any throughpasses), you don’t seem making clever one-twos, you don’t see him slipping a cheeky little chip over the defence, he may not have the pace or skill to beat men and he’s never been a ‘great’ passer of the ball. Those are not part of his game. Hence, in Carlo’s world, he’s more suited for defensive midfield that central or attacking midfield. His strengths are his ability to hold possession, to win free kicks and to negotiate challenges with power and strength.

If you notice, his pass completion ratio has come down. In recent times, most of his unsuccessful passes were long passes or passes of more than, say15 yards. He was never the man for long passes. Yes, he can change directions but not the long forward passes. Suddenly there is an increase in his attempt to pass long. This is where I wonder if his role or the expectations on him are changing. As a defensive midfielder, you only need to push the ball to safety. Many times, when he has the ball, you can see that he is not trying to just push the ball to safety but trying to do something in attack, even though he is under pressure. To keep the ball in attack despite tremendous pressure is not very easy and I suspect that he’s trying to do that, which is different from his ‘keep the ball, pass the ball to 5 yards and make runs when off the ball’.

As you go up the pitch you’re known by your positives. As a striker, how many goals you score than how many you missed. As a forward or an attacking midfielder, how many assists you made or how many chances you created. As get go back in the pitch, you’re known by your negatives. Tell what you didn’t do or what you did badly. Defenders and midfielders are known by their mistakes or gaffes rather than the number of tackles and interceptions they make. One mistake can undo an hour’s good work.

Essien has started making mistakes. At his role, every mistake of his makes the opposition grow in confidence. The sight of Essien being muscled and robbed off the ball is just unbearable. He needs a break – for his own good.

Now’s the time we seem to have some really good youngsters knocking on the doors. Surely, this would create a healthy competition for places. And dropping senior players because of poor form will send out the right kind of messages to the young players. They’d know that selection is based on merit and not just age and experience. They’d know that they have a chance.

He can’t continue with 5/10 and 6/10 performances. What’s worse is there are players in better form sitting in the bench. Without blinking an eye, I’d drop Essien to the bench, allow him to recoup and come back as the bison, engine and rock so we say ‘Now, this is the Essien I know’.

Should Michael Essien be dropped?

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