Ever driven a car with a flat tyre? Had a blow out? Well for those who haven’t, I can tell you the whole thing takes on a mind of it’s own. It doesn’t matter what you want it to do, it’ll have it’s own direction – usually towards a central reservation or somewhere equally unhelpful.
So why would you be remotely interested in my near misses? Because if you watch us play, you’ll get my point. We’re not the Ferrari we used to be, maybe more of a BMW these days but whilst that can still look pretty decent all shiny in the sun, if the mechanics are wrong and the driver can’t control it, it doesn’t look anywhere near as cool.
And that’s Chelsea at the minute – we’re like that BMW with a punctured front right and unless AVB gets some air in it, it doesn’t matter how much he wrestles the wheel during the season, the balance will be all wrong and we’ll be vulnerable.
Make more sense now? Ok, enough of the analogy, let’s just tell it how it is – we’re a bit soft on the right hand side. A bit flat on the left at times maybe but at least Malouda doesn’t drift out of position quite as much.
As far as a bit of oopmh up front, we have it in spades: Drogba, Torres, Sturridge, Anelka, Lukaku, Kalou – so much in fact, that we’ve tended to shove players like Anelka, Kalou and even Ramires on the right flank. The trouble is, none of them are natural wide players – so there’s that balance problem because they tend to drift in. Add to that Jose Bosingwa’s tendency to go AWOL for long periods of a season and we have nothing to offer from the right.
Drogba and Torres can hang around all they liked for a bit of service from that side of the pitch but they’d be in for a long wait when the ‘wide right’ player has usually drifted up their arse in the centre of the park.
But whilst I long for the days of Arjen Robben – when we really played with width – without a glut of gifted right wingers on the market, what’s AVB’s solution?
Blue is the colour
