Premier League: Youthful Chelsea set to take next mature step
Chelsea's Liam Delap (right) celebrates scoring their side's third goal of the game with team-mates during the UEFA Champions League match against Barcelona at Stamford Bridge, London. Picture: Bradley Collyer/PA Wire
With Christmas approaching fast, the top of the Premier League table is looking dramatically different from what most expected at the start of the season, with the exception of Arsenal of course.
This is mainly down to the absence of Liverpool, who are having as dramatic an unpredictably bad season as unpredictably great their season was last year. But it also shows a delicacy in Man City’s performance which was once inconceivable from a Pep Guardiola side. In this new era of turmoil among the recent season’s top three sides, Chelsea have quietly positioned themselves behind the Gunners in second place, with a recent run of wins that have matched the current table-toppers’ form, and who they just coincidentally meet in tomorrow evening’s game at Stamford Bridge.
Enzo Maresca’s side have gone about their business this season with an unnoticed efficiency and now have the chance, at home, to close the gap on the Gunners to three points, which was certainly not on the books of most pundits that had them maybe vying for the lower Champions League positions at the beginning of the season.
Part of this anonymity came from the indifferent start they made to the season, A couple of expected wins were followed by indifferent performances that saw the west London side draw with neighbours Brentford, followed by morale-sapping defeats at the hands of Bayern Munich, in the Champions League, and to Man United, Brighton, and later Sunderland back in the Premier League, all before we had got out of October. The side, seen by many as a basket case club with more money than any sense of what players they needed, were starting to be written off. Which was surprising considering they had just won the Club World Cup that summer and secured the Europa Conference League title with a fair bit of aplomb.
Sure, they were not the titles most clubs set out at the start of the season to win, but they were far more of an impressive haul than 99% of the other clubs. Yes the Club World Cup is a made-up FIFA thing, but still not a tournament any other club invited would likely reject.
Nevertheless, Chelsea’s move up the table seems to have creeped up on us unheralded. But looking at the recent run of results the Pensioners have admirably collected four wins and four clean sheets from their past five games, scoring 12 goals in the process.
Suddenly they are on a roll and culminating this week with a very comfortable and impressive 3-0 Champions League win over Barcelona, which saw the Londoners’ 18-year-old Brazilian, Estevao Willian, come out on top against Barca’s Lamine Yamal in the battle of the wunderkinds.
It seems the club that was in a constant loop of trying to find the next new signing and always planning for a future that never came has suddenly found a way to make use of the talent they have right here right now. And that seems to be down to Maresca, who has finally brought a bit of stability at Stamford Bridge after a number of years of frantic marketplace activity without much of a result.
In the year and half at the helm, the 45-year-old Italian has landed the aforementioned trophies, which are the first of the current club ownership, but has also removed the sense of chaos that existed in the club which indicated a rudderless path that used to just throw money at the problem without ever identifying the issue or whether by just bringing in yet another player it could be solved.
Maresca has steadied the ship, and it certainly is not a surprise that a man who honed his skills as the Academy manager at Manchester City would have elements of the style and vibe of Pep Guardiola about his management style, that is based on strategies dominated by possession. And Maresca has the advantage of having an abundance of talent all at a very young age at his disposal. Indeed, Maresca remains the division’s only-ever manager not to have used a player over the age of 30 thus far.
With so many young players available to him, he has been able to manage their playing minutes and hasn’t used Estevao in the league since September, rather sparing him for Champions League and key matches rather than running him into the ground just because the obvious talent would seem to demand it.
It seems like the constant long-term strategy of building for the future has suddenly come of age among the youthful dressing rooms of Chelsea and while they lack experience and have yet to bring a season long campaign to fruition, maybe the youngsters are ready to take on the elders at the top of the table. Like one legendary quote famously backfired, ‘you won’t win anything with kids’.
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