Chelsea: Where’s The Problem?

I’m seriously losing the will to live this season.

If we do manage to get our act together anytime soon – and I’m really not convinced we will – it’ll be too late the way we’re dropping points. And given the games we’ve got coming up, Blackburn wasn’t one I’d bargained on us cocking up.

It’s hard to know what to make of it though. I mean, both against Inter and Blackburn I was ranting on about how slow we looked but we’re an ageing side right? So it should have been expected anyway. God knows I’ve said often enough it’d catch up with us in the end. So why should the fact that it happened during the busiest time of the season come as a surprise?

Well, because whilst there’s no doubt we’re an ageing side, firstly you wouldn’t expect all of the players’ joints to suddenly seize up in unison in March and secondly, once the physio started getting through crate loads of WD40 earlier in the season you’d have thought Ancelotti would have considered using our younger players a little less conservatively than he has done.

So, if it isn’t just down to age then – because surprisingly enough, not all our players are over the hill anyway – what else is going on? Injuries maybe? Michael Essien’s absence has had a huge impact certainly, and Ashley Cole’s likewise, but we’re sitting behind a couple of sides who haven’t been without their fair share of injuries this season, so that just sounds like an excuse and if Ancelotti needed to, he could have asked Roman for a player or two surely?

Or maybe that’s where the problem lies – a naïve manager, whose easier time in Serie A hadn’t prepared him for the differences in the Premier League? He certainly seemed to start well enough and I’d even go as far as saying we were playing some good football under him but he hasn’t sustained the momentum he built up.

We’ve lost our fighting spirit and judging by Sunday’s performance, even our ability to bounce back – and whilst I’m not going to sit here and advocate getting rid of yet another manager, I have very little confidence in Ancelotti having anything up his sleeve to turn things back around.