ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: REWIND TO stoppage time at Stamford Bridge last Wednesday evening. Chelsea are leading Fulham, their advantage at the top of the Premier League about to swell to four points, with Frank Lampard, Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba all apparently on the mend. The champions felt impregnable, almost untouchable. Yet it appears their deficiencies were merely being masked in victory.
The mantra of the moment at the training ground now is “keep calm”. Carlo Ancelotti has been preaching it in the wake of the worst home defeat of the Roman Abramovich era, Sunday’s 3-0 defeat by Sunderland that leaves their lead down to two points.
The warning had been delivered with an anaemic first-half display at Liverpool the previous Sunday. Desperate calls for calm are one thing now, but Ancelotti has acknowledged that improvement is needed. The club have started to become careless.
Complacency has been allowed to set in, the shoddiness truly laid bare. There was Michael Essien’s ridiculous challenge as the referee prepared to blow for full-time against Fulham, a two-footed hop that may not have hurt Clint Dempsey but which wounded Chelsea’s immediate challenge. They missed his dynamism against Sunderland and will do so again at Birmingham and Newcastle.
Essien should have known better, with the ramifications of suspension potentially significant given the latest injury setback suffered by Lampard on Thursday and Drogba’s continued toils to recover from malaria. Once John Terry and Alex had succumbed to sciatic nerve and knee problems respectively, only Petr Cech of the champions’ first-choice defence was fully fit and available.
Ancelotti may still claim his squad has the required depth but the pedigree of replacement has declined. Gael Kakuta, Josh McEachran and Jeffrey Bruma are rising talents but they cannot be expected to plug the void left by a Lampard, an Essien or a Terry. The youngsters may thrive alongside those strong personalities but they are clearly not yet ready to replace them.
The loss of Michael Ballack, Deco, Joe Cole, Juliano Belletti and Ricardo Carvalho, now a regular at Real Madrid, has never been felt more keenly. The willingness to shed that batch of experienced squad players suddenly feels injudicious. Only Salomon Kalou of those on the bench on Sunday seemed like a player who could spark a revival against Sunderland.
While Chelsea were winning with most of their major players available, such issues could be buried. Two defeats in eight days have left them exposed and the unsettling departure of Ray Wilkins, Ancelotti’s number two, is untimely. There are suggestions that Wilkins feels he may have erred in conversation with Abramovich in the summer as the club reflected on a Double-winning season and that his reaction to the owner’s expression of the need for more improvement apparently counted against him.
Yet, regardless of whether Wilkins’ stay at the club was to be extended, to sack him so unceremoniously risked upsetting the balance.
Terry used his programme notes on Sunday to reflect on “an unexpected decision”. He wrote: “Ray’s been brilliant since he came in, from day one, not only as a coach but as a man as well. Ray was a great person to have around the football club. He would pick you up when you were down.”
He will presumably be missed this week.
Ancelotti bemoaned a lack of “fighting spirit, attitude and mentality” on Sunday, though his side have not responded well to adversity in recent times. On 10 of the last 11 occasions they have fallen behind in games they have ended up beaten, the exception coming when Blackburn’s slender lead was overhauled at Ewood Park last month. Manchester United, in contrast, have come back to avoid defeat in eight of the 11 games in which they have been behind in the same period.
The defeat by the Wearsiders could yet prove to be the wake-up call Terry hoped had been delivered at Anfield, but it has seen Chelsea slip back to within reach of the pack. Should Arsenal win against Spurs on Saturday, the champions will be playing catch-up for the first time this season. Keeping calm may be easier said than done.
Guardian Service
