Chelsea Balls: Mourinho Is Thrashing His Hapless Rivals At Arsenal And Manchester United
THE Premier League is good fun this season. Only Chelsea, of the so-called top clubs, play with any cohesion. Arsenal only go backwards to pull the bal from their net; Manchester United spray money at problems; Spurs are always building; Manchester City can’t defend; and Liverpool got lucky with Luis Saurez, whose departure exposed a batch of medicore, expensive individuals.
Paul Hayward is right:
No Premier League behemoth can say they have bought major defensive ballast, or supplemented individual world-class talent to the back line. City signed Eliaquim Mangala but after a bright start he developed culture shock. The less glamorous clubs can now see that Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal and United are no longer hard to score against. Swansea (who are fifth), the so-called mini-Arsenal, made a policy decision to be tougher in their own third of the field, because they saw how much they could gain with a better balance between defence and attack…
The pressure to spray-spend £100m each summer is not yielding good results. It brings problems of balance and integration. It turns the heat on managers if the first 10 results are underwhelming.
And it plays to a delusion English football is increasingly falling prey to. The paranoia is that unless games are emotionally exhausting and aesthetically thrilling, rotten tomatoes will be lobbed by fans and pundits.
At the summit, Mourinho is showing Premier League clubs how to advance and retreat as a single fighting force. Chelsea are in another galaxy to the rest. Premier League campaigns are not meant to be over by Christmas, but this one threatens to be…
Looking at high-flying Southampton, what it adds up to is that the manager earns his corn. Would fans of Arsenal swap Wenger for Klopp, Liverpool fans exchange Rodgers for Koeman, Manchester United’s legions swap Van Gaal for Guardiola and Pelligrini for Everton’s Martinez?
Yes.
Posted: 10th, November 2014 | In: Chelsea, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
