For all the hype and hoopla over injuries and squad strength, I think it’s only fair to see if there claims are real? In this post, I’d like to talk about the squads of Chelsea and Man Utd, the squad strengths, how well these clubs have used the squads and how much the absences have impacted.

I strongly believe that we have a very good squad. A squad that can win the title. At least, it’s not as poor as it shows on the league table. With this squad of internationals, we should not be at 5th in the table. With this squad of champions, we should not be worrying about a Europa cup spot. When we win with this squad, we call it experience. When we lose, we’re quick to say they are ageing and past their best.

I want use some information here. Let’s look at the tables below. What you see below is the Chelsea squad and Man Utd squad and of course the league table. In the squad tables, you can see the number of games started (GS) and the substitute appearances (SB).

This is a fairly long post. Apologies for that. Please take your time to read through the full post. Here we go!

Argument #1:

Chelsea and Man Utd have equally big squads. Both teams have 26 players. Man Utd have used all of them  this season. Chelsea have used only 22. Man Utd have used players like Macheda, Obertan, Gibson and Bebe while Chelsea never used Borini, van Aanholt, Mellis and Sala. For Chelsea, 7 out of the 26 players didn’t make even one start (that includes Sturridge and McEachran) while Man Utd has given starts to 25 out of 26 players. By my evaluation, this Chelsea squad is much stronger than this Man Utd squad, on paper – not on form, purely on potential.

We have failed to get the players deliver to their potential – not of one player but of many players. If you’ve been watching Chelsea and Man Utd this season, hand on heart, you’d know which team has more desire, hunger and determination. We’re not talking about some team here. This is Chelsea. Champions of England. One of the very best in Europe. No matter who plays and who does not, the team should play with the same spirit. The spirit comes not from successes or defeats – it comes from pride and motivation. If a manager can get the best out of some, and not all, of these champion players, we’ll be at least in No.2.

Argument #2:

Drogba missed a lot of matches? Well, he has started in 22 matches and has made 3 sub appearances. So that’s 25 out of 26 premier league matches. It’s like he was always there. Malaria medication? In a top club like Chelsea, when someone’s in the team sheet, he must be fit enough to play. We’ve put too much into his ‘malaria medication’ because that’s easy and convenient. He was on the pitch for 25 out of the 26 premier league matches and he hasn’t delivered enough.

Desire & Motivation Not Malaria . . .

Meanwhile, what about Dimitar Berbatov? Started 21 matches and made 2 sub appearances. That’s 23 matches out of 26 premier league matches so far. So, Berba has played less number of matches than Drogba. Berba is 30 and Drogba is 32. Let’s not read too much into the ‘age’ thing. If Drogba was poor last season, you might have said that he’s aging but he did have a great season. Giggs at 75, is still playing very well. Why? Fergie knows how to balance his squad.

Staying on the topic of strikers/forwards, Rooney was missing for Man Utd for 9 out of 26 matches. Also keep in mind that he went through a torrid time because of his ultimatum and all that. Anelka has started in 22 matches and come in as a sub once. Basically, Drogba has played more matches than Rooney or Berbatov. Plus, Anelka and Drogba have made 48 appearances among them (more than 4500 mins on the pitch) while Rooney and Berbatov have made 40 appearances. They scored more. We scored less. Last season we scored more. This season we scored less. Simple statements of fact.

Did I say, Robin van Persie started only 9 games this season? Who were they playing with? Maroune Chamakh. Maroune f***ing Chamakh? And we had Drogba playing 25 matches and Anelka playing 23? Daniel Sturridge is better than Maroune Chamakh any bloody day. And Arsenal are fighting for the title while we are not.

Argument #3:

Frank Lampard was missing due to injury? Consider this. Frank made 12 appearances (11 of them being starts). In these 12 matches, we have won 6, drawn 3 and lost 3. If you say his absence has impacted Chelsea, note that we have not won 6 of the 12 matches that he has played this season. What makes us think this proportion would not have changed even if he had played all the matches this season? The 36-year old Paul Scholes has had as many starts as Lampard and has been more effective this season. Once again, Fergie has been very clever in using his resources and hence gets the best out of them.

Man Utd had only ONE midfielder who started in more than 20 games. For us, we had Essien and Obi Mikel, who both made 22 starts each. Frank Lampard missed 14 of the 26 matches this season so far. So are we saying we didn’t expect a 32-year old player to be affected by injuries for 14 matches? Yes, we did. What did we do? We bought an 18m midfielder in Ramires and we had a Josh McEachran who has made zero starts so far. As an aside, Ramires started more games than Michael Carrick.

When Chelsea were leading the table by the end of October 2010, do you know that Lampard had played only 3 games by then and Ramires was hit and miss. We were still leading the table in November, without Lampard’s contribution and with a new Ramires.

Argument #4:

Options we had, courage we didn't have

We have had a more solid defence. Petr Cech has started in every single match. John Terry started in 22 matches and Ivanovic could play in 24 matches. For Man Utd, their defender-captain Rio Ferdinand played only 15 matches. How did they manage? Rafael made 22 appearances, Johnny Evans made 8 and Smalling 7. So 20-year old Rafael made 22 appearances while 19-year old Bruma made just 2. The 20-year old van Aanholt has not even played one match while Jonny Evans made 18 starts while he was 20 years and 45 starts the year later in the overall season.

See, Man Utd have used less of Wes Brown and more of Rafael. We are using Paulo Ferreira instead of van Aanholt. That’s where the difference lies. Are we saying Jeffrey Bruma and van Aanholt are not ready when compared to Rafael and Jonny Evans? Man Utd are not waiting outside the room while their youngsters ready themselves in a chemical process. They are being proactive. They take risks. They get paid off.

And yes, despite having a better defence than Man Utd, we have lost only one match less than Sunderland, Fulham, Everton and Birmingham. Good company?

So, what’s my point?

We have a good enough squad to win the title. Let’s not belittle our squad because we lost our way due to poor man management and poor tactics. This very squad was leading the table very comfortably. This squad was being hailed as the probable back-to-back champions. The analyses and odds clearly showed how much the pundits and punters rated this squad.

Great Manager! Double Winner! But the buck stops right here!

Fast forward a few months, we are struggling for a Europa spot. We are out of all competitions except champions league by February. And we want to put this all under squad size, squad depth, injuries and the like? These are common denominators across all the clubs in modern football.

So who are the players that we think are not playing to their potential or even three-quarters of their potential? Let me make a list based on what I generally read from Chelsea fans – John Terry, Ashley Cole, Michael Essien, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Florent Malouda, Jose Bosingwa, John Obi Mikel – do you see what’s wrong here? These are fantastic players. These are players that have brought us successes consistently. These are players that give their 100% every single time they step on the pitch. Why have so many players suddenly delivering below their potential?

If so many such key players deliver so below their potential, who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? If a team (defending champions) that was comfortably leading the table by November suddenly struggles for Europa spot, who do you think should take the responsibility? Finally, if you give this very squad to Fergie, what do you think will happen? If we do a manager-swap, under Fergie, do you think this Chelsea team would be at No.5 in the table with nothing else to play for than the champions league by February? Do you think we took enough risks? Do you think we were enterprising and adventurous enough in our approach to resource utilisation?

More importantly, where do you think the buck stops?

A rare sight -- Lampard scores

Let’s start by agreeing that scoring a goal is the hardest thing to do in football.

It’s a lot harder than stopping goals. It’s not an accident that top strikers always earn more than top goalkeepers.

Because scoring goals is so hard, the men who do it often are worth more than their weight in gold. A lot more.

Fernando Torres was sold for £50 million. Cristiano Ronaldo fetched £80 million. Even Dmitar Berbatov was deemed to be worth £30 million and Andy Carroll £35 million.

Scoring goals is hard. It’s valuable. And not just anyone can do it.

This looks hard, but it's easier than scoring

Agreed?

Now let’s agree on a second thing.

Chelsea are struggling this season in large part because they’re not scoring goals like they did last season.

After 26 matches this season, Chelsea have scored 46 goals. That’s 15 fewer than they’d scored at this point in the last campaign.

Chelsea are scoring at a rate of 1.8 goals per match. That’s a whopping 0.9 fewer goals per game. Almost a goal a game difference. A staggering difference.

Where have the goals gone?

Sick of not scoring

Easy. They vanished into Frank Lampard’s groin and hamstring muscles and Didier Drogba’s malaria medication.

The two men had career years last season. Neither man will ever score as many goals in a single season again. Drogba knocked-in a Golden Boot’s worth of 29. Lampard chased him all year to tally 22.

How good was that? For Drogba, 9 more than ever before. An astonishing average of 0.9 goals a match. That’s right, almost a goal for every time he stepped onto a Premier League pitch. By comparison, his career average is 0.49, a little less than a goal every two games. So 2009-10 was the best year of his life, by a wide margin.

Frank Lampard’s 22 Premier League goals were 6 better than his previous best and 9 better than his third-best season. His scoring average was 0.6, more than twice as good as his career average of 0.28.

So Drogba had a career year. Lampard had a career year. Chelsea scored 103. Had a league-leading goal differential of 71.

And yet they still couldn’t clinch the Premier League title until the very last game of the season.

Fast forward to this season.

Drogba has 9 goals. His average is a relatively anemic 0.38 per match. Lampard’s even worse. He’s only played 11 matches and tallied a woeful 3 times. We all know the reasons why.

So that’s where the goals have gone.

With the Big Two slumping, is it possible that the missing goals can be coaxed out of the rest of the squad?

He can't carry the team

Let’s look at their goal totals and their career averages to see if that’s a reasonable expectation.

Nicolas Anelka has scored 6 times so far, an average of 0.27. Last season he put away 11 at a clip of 0.33. (His best season ever was 19 goals, in 2008-2009 at an average of 0.5 per match.) So Anelka is not scoring well either. But if he were scoring at the same rate as last season he’d only have tallied 2 more goals at the most. That still leaves a lot of goals on the table.

The rest of Chelsea’s scorers are actually getting goals at rates above their career averages.

Malouda already has 9 goals. Last year he had 12 for the entire campaign (his best season ever.) His current average is 0.36, the same as last year and above his career average of 0.26. His previous best year was 6 goals in 2007-08.

Kalou has 7 goals in 21 matches, a .33 average that’s above his career average of 0.24. Last season he only netted 5 at 0.22. His best season ever is 7 goals, in ’07-’08 and ’08-’09.

Those are Chelsea’s top five scorers from last season. Essien is the only other goals candidate, and his career-best is 6 (he has 3 so far.)

Given these numbers, it’s hard to see where there are another 15 goals on the current Chelsea squad.

Which makes sense.

As we agreed at the beginning, scoring goals is hard. Only a few gifted men do it with regularity. Chelsea is lucky to have two of them. But they’re both having awful seasons due to sickness and injury.

Embracing a new scorer

So if you want to understand why Chelsea is struggling, look to the goals total.

It also explains why Roman Abramovich thinks it’s worth spending 50 million pounds to buy another of those rare creatures… the consistent goal scorer.

I’m extremely proud to say that I’m now blogging (also) on the official Chelsea FC website. Any sports blogger will tell you that this is a dream moment. I’ve known for about a month that my blog would appear on the official website. I’ve been preparing for some time along with the Chelsea FC representative for this. Despite all this, when it did go live, it was an extremely proud and surreal moment. My 4.5 years of Chelsea blogging flashed before my eyes.

It gives me goosebumps to find my name, photo and blog in a space that’s frequented by Chelsea FC players, staff and coaching staff. It is similar to the feeling I got when I was in the Chelsea dressing room as part of my stadium tour a couple of years back. I was thinking, on a different day, Lampard, Terry and Mourinho could have been right there with me. It was such a thrilling feeling.

The day when I registered the domain name www.bluechampions.com, did I think that I’ll feature in the official website one day? No way. But I always knew why online communities are important and how their voice can be heard. Many times, in this very blog, I have talked about how significant these fan forums such as blogs and discussion boards are.

It’s natural that some of you might wonder if this will have an impact on my blogging in BlueChampions. Yes, you’ll have a more proud blogger on the key board. Some might wonder how will this change my style of blogging (will I become more politically correct?). There will only be positive changes. I’ll continue exactly the same way as I have so far, when it comes to expressing my thoughts and opinions.

The club loves to hear from the fans and supporters. They want to know what we feel about the club and the blue revolution. We will only help the cause by being honest and open. To invite the Chelsea bloggers to share some space in the official website is a great indication of how much the fan communities are valued by the club. There’s no two ways about it.

Most important part of this post now. Here are the links of the post and that of my bio. Here is the link to my first post – Who would have thought?. And here’s the link to my profile there. Pardon me for the pretentious look on the picture. Would love to see the BC folks get in there and show your support by adding your tuppence. I’m sure you’ll do.

My sincere thanks to Luca Massaro (Digital Marketing Analyst, Chelsea FC) who is the main man behind all this. He’s been extremely patient and supportive. It’s been great to know him and work with him. I’m sure this new relationship with him and Chelsea FC would continue and get stronger.

Finally, I must say I never thought I’d get to share the stage with Michael Essien. Note that I’m a few notches above him there (thanks to the alphabetical listing)!!

A comfortable win, finally. I haven’t had this feeling in a long while. Not even in the 4-2 win against Sunderland. This match against Copenhagen was under our control from the first minute. FCK did try their best they couldn’t match up to the experienced opponents.

We started with a 4-4-2, with Torres and Anelka upfront. I said this in BC Shout before the kick off too – I was pleased that Drogba was dropped and Carlo chose Anelka and Torres. That’s the right thing to do. Now, he only needs to extend this to every single position in the team.

This was a much better performance from Torres. He couldn’t find the net despite getting some really good chances. But what I was impressed was how well he played with his new team mates. Lampard was able to find Torres very often . The chemistry between Torres and Anelka was decent, much better than the one between Torres and Drogba. Probably, that was also because Torres is improving.

For me, the biggest pluses from the match were these: (a) Drogba didn’t start and we still won 2-0 (b) Torres’ performance was very promising. It’s only a matter of time before he starts scoring (c) Lampard was very much in the game, created quite a few opportunities including the smart assist for the game winner (d) the tie is over unless we are first grade masochists.

Good performance all around. It’s easy to say, this was only FC Copenhagen and that helped us. While there’s truth in it, let’s not be in some illusion that we were struggling only against the top teams. We have been struggling against ALL teams in the premier leauge – from No.1 to No.20. Therefore, a good result or an impressive performance against Copenhagen is not a small thing.

I’m wiser now though. I’m not going to say ‘we’ve turned the corner’ or ‘we’re back’ or some optimistic slogans. We’ve said this a few times this season and we’ve been proved wrong. But I will only have to wait for a week. Next Tuesday, we play Man Utd. Unlike before, this game is not crucial for our title run anymore. But it’s very important for us to gather these points and get to third place and gain an automatic champions league spot, or in a worst case scenario, get the fourth place.

The key is if Chelsea can continue this momentum. Can Carlo motivate Chelsea enough for the Man Utd game? How much confidence will Chelsea have when they face Man Utd? If Fergie wants a draw, would we force a win or complain about the opponents’ tactics like losers? We will wait to see.

We are still alive. I had this thought before the game and I maintain it. Now I want to see my players do this again, again, again.

Thanks Carlo. The thing is, YOU hold the key!

The manager, the captain, the team, the fans – we are all in the same page. We must win the champions league. Well, if we are winning something this season, it’s only gotta be the ‘big ears’, because we are no longer in any other tournament.

If you’re a regular reader, you’d know that I prefer to draw the biggies in earlier stages rather than later for two reasons. One is, you can eliminate a key rival for the title who you anyway might have to play at some stage; two is, the confidence that it gives you to move ahead to win the trophy is immense. This time around, I didn’t want us to draw the biggies. When the draw was made, we were right in the middle of the disastrous form this season. I was hugely relieved that we’re playing FC Copenhagen. That’s no disrespect to FC Copenhagen but certainly they are no match to Chelsea, on paper.

In the new landscape here at Chelsea FC, you can’t take anyone lightly. Certainly not FC Copenhagen. I don’t what the odds are, they could be close to even. If I were a punter, I’d surely put some money on FC Copenhagen to upset Chelsea. We know that it’s not so much of an upset as we seem to fearing this game while they are all set to rock our already wrecked boat.

We have a near-full squad to choose from – as it’s been in the recent couple of months. We also have Fernando Torres available. True to his style, Carlo has already announced that Fernando would start. Torres should find playing away at Copenhagen lot better than playing in England. Playing in Copenhagen would be less pressure, for him, at this stage. As far as team selection goes, we know who gets picked and who’d play. So apart from the news that Torres would play, there’s nothing much I want to add.

Make no mistake, the opponents are waiting for us. They’re longing to play this game and knock us off. Solbakker, the FC copenhagen coach says this:

Since 10 January, we have been preparing for this game and this game only. Maybe we haven’t had the opposition we’ve needed to be at our best level, but the players are in good shape and confident. Some of my players are so daft that they think they’re a better side than Chelsea. Maybe I should be talking them down a bit. Some have only lost one or two games playing in this side, so they think it’s easy. Confidence is very high in the team.

FC Copenhagen players thinking that they’re a better side than Chelsea? How the mighty have fallen!

Carlo on the other hand, takes solace from his trackrecord and believes that his history would repeat.

A lot of times, I’ve been able to manage this moment. I want to remind you in 2007 it was the same situation and the Italian journalists know this. The Champions League is the most important competition. We’re involved this season more compared with the other competitions. To be under pressure, this means to be focused and try to do our best in this competition, to try to win.

He also said, in a very firm manner:

Chelsea won’t go out against Copenhagen.

I’ve trusted him so long, I’ll give him one last chance.