I have just had the chance to listen to the comments of several of our players after the draw with Watford and I must say I am both alarmed and disappointed. It makes me ask this critical question;
“What has happened to our character?” This is a critical matter because teams have identity ( or they should anyway) and it is beginning to appear to me that part of what ails us is that Chelsea FC has lost its identity.
I still distinctly remember two descriptions of Chelsea FC from the early 2000s that epitomized what Chelsea`s character was; In a Newsweek or Time ( I forget which it was) article a few weeks after our second title win under Jose, the writer indicated that what was so daunting about playing Chelsea FC was their ruthless efficiency..the fact that to beat them you had to be at your absolute best and hope to God that you caught them on one of their rare “off days”. That was who we were..not necessarily pretty but ruthlessly efficient.
The second description that comes to mind were the words of Andres Iniesta of Barcelona that followed one of our skirmishes with barca in the early 2000s. To paraphrase him he essentially said; ” Anyone who ever tells you they like to play Chelsea is not being honest. To play them is to go to war..win, lose or draw when the match is over you will have the scars and bruises to remind you of the encounter. Nothing will come easy. They are not rough or dirty but they are unapologetically physical and ruthlessly efficient. Whenever you play Chelsea you will remember the encounter for years to come.”
This had been the identity of Chelsea since Jose`s first coming and this continued essentially up to our win in Munich is 2012. Since then for whatever reason things have changed as we have tried to rebuild a new team..and now I fear we are in a full scale identity crises.
I have read and listened to the comments of four of our players following the Watford game; JT, Matic, Oscar and Willian.
Honestly I found nothing of note to mention regarding Willian`s comments..He essentially just said the squad needs to move on from Jose`s departure and try to adapt to Hiddink`s new methods. I agree with those views..nothing to criticize there.
I saw JTs brief interview after the game and he said something that caught my attention; that we were not good enough and we made a few critical mistakes that cost us the win. That warmed my heart. Taking responsibility requires mental toughness; a character trait required to enable improvement with time. JT has his flaws, he has certainly not been perfect this season but his body of work is there for all to see why we call him; captain, leader, legend and Captain fantastic. His mental attitude is unchanged though his body is now expectedly betraying him given his age. This really should be his final season if he and the club are to be brutally honest. I can live with that and it does not change the fact that he is without a doubt one of the clear legends of our club.
On the other hand I listened to Oscar and I just shook my head as this guy blamed our dropped points in this match to “bad luck”. Really??? bad luck???..buddy how about taking some personal responsibility? How about just stating the obvious that you need to step up and be counted, that you need to do much better than you are doing and that you absolutely let your team mates down by taking a terrible PK and thus cost the team two extra points. How about owning your short comings and then openly commiting to do what needs to be done on the training pitch to set this straight. I cannot but contrast this sheepish attitude with that of Juan Mata at ManU who recently publicly apologized to the Manu fans for the poor performance of both he and his team mates and indicated that they would resolve to do better. This is the sad thing about that decision that Jose made several years back..to remove mata and essentially anoint Oscar as the unchallenged no 10 for our team was one of many bad personnel decisions Jose made that ultimately culminated in his eventual sack.
There was more from Oscar as he intimated that there were players who were unhappy about being dropped from the starting line up during Jose`s final months. This really bothered me because I am certain he is one of those players. Of course no player wants to be on the bench, any professional worth his salt should want to start but as a professional you absolutely must respect the manager decisions regarding who starts. The way to make the manager consider getting you back starting is to show the desire and quality on the training pitch and when you are given sub minutes in a match. Oscar has not done that and the vast majority of the vets jose had to drop absolutely had not done that either. These words from Oscar again show to me a player with a sense of entitlement that was not earned or deserved and a player who has little mental toughness to be adequately self critical. In retrospect from these comments I can see now that the absolute worst thing Jose could have done was to have sold Mata and essentially given this guy the absolute wrong idea that he had arrived. With mata and eventually KDB gone Oscar really had no-one to force him to grow and develop his game and instead the guy has stunted into what we have now. Oscar sadly does not have the character I would like in a Chelsea player. Lets not talk of ability, that is not the matter for discussion here..character is the issue and for me it is a huge cause for concern.
Nemenja Matic ‘s comments are essentially just as damning. Again I must say the difference between this guy this season and the last is simply shocking to say the least. He looks like the ghost of his former self and honestly I don`t understand what has caused this shocking dip in quality and form. What is more concerning than his drop in form though is the window his comments show regarding character.
Once again like Oscar, Matic references “bad luck”. Come on Nemenja, bad luck made you raise up your hand and touch an airborne ball in our 18 yard box? I would have had far greater respect for him if he just came out and stated the obvious; “I am sorry..i made a horrible error and it cost us a needless goal which ended up costing us 2 precious points. That is on me and I need to do better. I must improve and I will. ” That is what a player with character says..that is taking responsibility rather than seeking to shift blame to this ephemeral entity called “bad luck”.
Now don`t get me wrong we have had more than our fair share of bad luck this season (someone else somewhere said that this is comeuppance and penance for all the good luck we used up during the 2012 run to the historic double of the FA cup and Champions league titles especially considering our depleted squad and managerial carousel at that time. Some other persons say this is karma type payback to Chelsea FC and jose for the way we treated Eva Carniero and Jon Fearn) and I don`t deny it but the problem with incessantly referencing bad luck is that it becomes a crutch on which mentally weak players lean rather than taking responsibility and seeking to improve what they have control over which is themselves and their performance.
The thing that worries me is this; if this is the mind set of Oscar and Matic, how many more of our vet starters are in this mind set; blaming “bad luck” for our woes and pouting whenever they are benched rather than looking critically in the mirror at their poor performances and resolving to actually improve and earn their starting spots.
I will reiterate something I said when I learnt that Jose got fired; Player power may have played a role in Jose`s ultimate down fall but honestly even that he unwittingly brought on himself because the big antidote for player power is having adequate size and quality depth in the squad. In trying to establish and fix his so called untouchables jose unwittingly set the foundation that became his own undoing because it is now apparent that many of the players on which he risked his entire reputation (and for whom he sacrificed several other players he met here when he arrived) simply did not have the mental toughness nor character to stand in the face of adversity ( unlike the first set of untouchables from his first stint).
Gus is an interim manager and so there are clear limits to the degree he can change or modify this mess of a situation but for the board and for whomever will be our next new manager they had best learn the lessons that need to be learnt from the mistakes from Jose`s second era. We need what is now looking like a fairly significant overhaul of our current team next summer but first and foremost as we do this we need to be very clear what our team identity is intended to be and carefully seek out players with that sort of identity because without identity, without the mental toughness to stand up and be counted in times of adversity , flair, skill and silk wont get us very far in the rough and tumble BPL nor even in Europe either. Chelsea needs a new set of players with steel in both their physique and mental constitution if we are to return to where we once were. KTBFFH.
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