Can you remember where you were on the night of May 19 2012? If the answer is yes – it’s impossible to forget Chelsea’s greatest European coup – or no – you ended up celebrating a little too well – then this could be the blog for you.
Following the Blues’ perfect start to the Premier League campaign, it would take a brave pundit to rule Chelsea out of the Champions League running this season. All the tell-tale clues are clear to see, especially after the 4-2 win at Stamford Bridge on Saturday.
Jose Mourinho’s marquee signings are transforming the team, with seven goals and six assists as instant evidence of an upgrade. Frankly, Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas have brought back the fun in watching Chelsea take on familiar mid-table sides like Swansea City – regardless of John Terry turning the ball into his own net after 11 minutes.
Unlike Chelsea’s utter humiliations at the hands of Sunderland and Norwich City in the spring, while the Special One fiercely bemoaned his lack of ‘real’ goalscorers, this game was never in doubt. What’s more, there were signs that the whole ground knew it.
Take, for instance, that one fan (and there’s always one, wherever you sit at a football stadium) so grumpy that he makes Arsene Wenger sound like Desmond Tutu. In my case, a man just out of sight but sadly still within earshot: the kind of Chelsea supporter who despised Salomon Kalou. Even he fell silent, arms folded, starved of complaint.
It’s the difference between last year’s Blues and the new line-up in a nutshell. There was no way those players – a lethal five-strong supply line behind a simply outstanding finisher – could conceivably have gone the rest of the match without staging a comeback.
Forgiving a few defensive doubts, the revamped XI reminded us why Chelsea can dominate Europe’s elite on their day. There’s only a handful of strikers as clinical as Costa, wingers as devastating as Eden Hazard and Andre Schürrle, and midfielders as smart as Fabregas and Nemanja Matic, let alone teams that unite their individual attributes.
The disclaimers will appear thick and fast as usual: it’s early days and the real challenges are yet to come. You would, however, need to be the most pessimistic fan in the whole of west London to deny that Chelsea have a chance of prevailing on various fronts.
Significantly, Chelsea are the only 2014 Champions League semi-finalists not to be missing pivotal players as a result of the summer sales. The transfer of talent between the Blues and their eventual victors means they would surely have the upper hand against Atlético Madrid, impoverished without Costa and the fast-maturing Thibaut Courtois.
Meanwhile, Real Madrid’s slow start in La Liga shows that the next generation of Galácticos may take time to compensate for the departing Xabi Alonso and Ángel Di María, but Bayern Munich could also regret losing Toni Kroos and Mario Mandžukić.
Even if Chelsea can’t defeat a side man for man, their manager is among the most skilled and seasoned in the competition. Mourinho has built a team capable of challenging both the English and continental powerhouses. Better still, he’s primed to prove it.
Source: Metro UK
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