da stake casino： If Chelsea hadn’t beaten Valencia on Tuesday you can be sure there would have been further calls for Villas-Boas’ head. He has divided opinion since he arrived at Chelsea with some seeing him as the future of football management and one that deserves patience and others see him as none other than a new Scolari, in charge of team that looks disorganised and leaking goals. His record hasn’t been great so far, in fact he’s had a worse start to the season than Scolari did and the Brazilian was gone by now. But then again the job Villas-Boas has been asked to do is not the same as the job Scolari had to do, nor is it the same job Ancelotti had to do, or any other manager for that matter. No matter how rich Abramovich is Chelsea were never going to be able to buy a world class team every season and having previously bought so many aging stars who either left at the end of their contracts or about to do so now the club has recuperated none of its money. Moreover it has spent vast sums of money on players that simply aren’t performing. Then Villas-Boas gets brought in and asked to sort it all out. It was always going to take time.
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Squad problems
As I said one of the major problems is the aging squad, which causes the manager difficulties for a number of reasons. Firstly Terry, Drogba, Lampard and Ashley Cole are not the players they used to be, and neither is Cech for that matter. They are all still good, but not nearly as good as they were a few years ago. Chelsea’s strength in recent years has been based on this spine throughout the team that was not only extremely consistent but were used to playing with each other week in week out. Now Drogba and Lampard only get games sporadically, Terry is not what he once was and Essien is permanently injured.
What’s more is that Terry, Drogba and Lampard clearly aren’t interested in learning a new style of play from scratch. Terry, as a defender, will always be capable of fitting in to this new plan but Lampard’s constant absence from Villas-Boas’ side is a telling factor as is Villas-Boas’s indecision about Torres and Drogba even though Torres looks about as dangerous as David Nugent. The problem with Frank is not that he is necessarily a bad player but that he makes the rest of the team play worse. Chelsea’s previous style of play is encapsulated in the way Lampard plays his football, and Lampard’s recent decline is a clear metaphor for that Chelsea era. The problems with attitude lie not only in individual cases of players but also in the divisions between players in the squad. The egos in the Chelsea squad are so large they have their own gravitational pull and where five years ago Chelsea had a great team spirit now there seems to be very little.
The other problem with Torres is that he is not Andre Villas-Boas’ signing. Torres is a striker clearly lacking in confidence and it will be hard to convince him that his manager believes in him when a) Villas-Boas didn’t sign him and b) he’s playing terribly. David Luiz, Ramires and Torres cost a combined total of almost £100m last season. It seems strange that Abramovich would do that only then to fire Ancelotti. You can’t help but feel Chelsea would be doing a lot better if their current manager had been allowed to spend that money. Ramires, admittedly, is improving all the time but Torres and Luiz’s performances have left a lot to be desired this season
Tactics
So, bearing in mind the manager is trying to instil a completely new football philosophy at a club full of expensive mistakes and players who, in the twilight of their life, seem to lack both the drive and the ability to start afresh, Villas-Boas isn’t doing too badly. His main problems so far this season seemed to have stemmed from a combination of playing too high a defensive line and individual errors from players. We saw against Valencia that he has learned from his mistakes. The players that have underperformed such as Lampard, Torres and Mikel were left on the bench and the defence played a lot deeper than they have been doing.
Villas-Boas promised attacking football too and he has delivered on this. His side have averaged over two goals per game in the Premier League and the Champions League this year, were it not for their defence they would be in a much better position domestically. Some of the criticism of Villas-Boas has undoubtedly been fair but what you have to remember is that he is trying to do something at Chelsea that hasn’t been done for a long time. He is trying to build a team, that means changing the club over the course of time whilst simultaneously having to adapt to English football. He may have had a shaky start to the season but there was a reason Abramovich paid £13m for the manager, let’s just hope he remembers that.
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