The fans are not at fault here Rafa!

Last night saw a spectacular outburst from the Interim one and it is a wonder that he is still in charge of this football club. The outburst has had some people agreeing with him (basically opposition fans, those who like to be different and those who crave attention) and some people disagreeing with him, and surprisingly a number of media outlets agreeing with Chelsea fans on this point.

Chelsea fans have been right from the outset, yes we didn't want him because he was in charge of Liverpool and said some stupid things about us but more than that we knew that he is a useless manager. At the end of his reign as Liverpool manager Chelsea fans would sing that we wanted him to stay  there because he was doing such a wonderful job of messing up Liverpool football club. We knew it then and we knew it when he was appointed here.

Benitez has a habit of blaming everyone possible for his failings other than himself. When he came he said that he will prove himself by winning games, well he has not won games that he should be winning and as such has proved himself to be as useless as we thought he was. He said he would get Torres playing well again but Torres scored more and looked better pre-Benitez. It is quite staggering how bad things have got.

For Benitez to come out and blame the fans for the poor performances is just ridiculous. You can blame Abramovic for the knee jerk sacking of DiMatteo and the frankly bizarre appointment of Benitez. You can blame the players for not playing to their highest level. Then you can blame the man whose bizarre team selections, tactics and substitutions actually DO dictate what goes on the pitch. 

On top of all that he has it totally wrong, Chelsea fans do support the TEAM they do not support BENITEZ. There is big difference there and one i am sure that is not lost on the players. 

To me it seems like this is a man who has either found out that he is not getting the job long term and is chucking his toys out of the pram. Or more likely because he has previous of this is to find things are not going well for him and he is trying to maneuver his way out of the club.

If he is not given the push before the game against West Brom then the reception he is going to get will quite rightfully be unbelievable and will continue to be so until he finally leaves our club and on that day everyone will be happy. The desire for Benitez to go has got to such a level that most people are thinking warmly of comical Avi Grant and would quite happily have him back for the end of the season.

Personally i can't go that far, a Steve Holland, Dermot Drummy combination would suit me for the remainder of the season. Any replacement would get better results than Benitez is now. But the question has to be asked, how on earth is he still the manager after that rant? 
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Put us out of our misery

A season that started with so much promise has now descended into chaos. When the 2012/13 season started we were looking forward with excitement, we had signed some exciting young talent with ability to make us play some good football and we had the prospect of some exciting trophies to win with Super cup and the World Club Cup both up for grabs.

Fast forward to today and we have managed to mess up the Community Shield, the Super Cup, the Champions League, the Club World Cup, the League Cup and the Premiership leaving us with the FA Cup and the Europa League a competition we never expected to be in in the first place and chances are very slim that we will win either of those.

Add to that list of disasters the fact that we fired a manager hugely popular with the fans way before giving him. Fair chance and appointed the only man that Chelsea fans would dispise being in the job even if it is only as interim.

So all I am asking now is for the club and Roman to put us out of our misery. Please just get shot of Benitez whatever it means. Even if we replace him with Steve Holland and Dermot Drummy for the rest of the season. Anything has got to be better than what we are having to sit and suffer at the moment. The football is going very wrong and it is clear Benitez has not got a clue how to get things going for us again.

We are in serious danger of missing out on a top four finish again this season and this time there will be no way for us to get in the Champions League without it. To start next season without Champions League football would not help us at all.

Lets act now, no manger has been afforded the luxury of this level of poor results and performances and hold onto his job so why allow it now. Sack Benitez now and let's try and save something from this season and that is securing a top 4 finish.

All we ask us get Benitez as far away from this club as possible. And quickly too.

Support the academy

These are trying times for Chelsea fans, watching our team perform to a level that is way below them and struggling to beat even the smallest of teams, not to mention having to endure a manager that pretty much ever fan cannot stand. But thankfully there is an answer to the woes...... follow the young stars in the academy!

Roman Abramovic has a vision for Chelsea, he wants them to be an entertaining team, playing wonderful football and being successful at the same time. What he may not realize is that it has already been achieved and the academy is providing that vision.

Last night saw a Chelsea U19's team take on a huge challenge in the NextGen series last 16 against first team foes Barcelona. The assumption was that things would go pretty similar to the first team, Barcelona will have lots of possession and Chelsea will try and hold them off and catch them on the break.  As it turned out it was just like the first team, but not in that way. As is typical in a Chelsea Barcelona game Chelsea had to play half the game with 10 men. Prior to Connor Hunte being sent off Chelsea were playing very good football, playing out from the back and keeping possession well, Barca had chances but a lot of them game from mistakes from our defence. In the first half we deserved to be 1 - 0 ahead and then had to hold off waves of Barca attacks than really led to little in real chances due to a superb defensive performance  then much like a night not too long ago in Barcelona we go down the other end and Boga produces some magic to win the game.

I would have loved to have seen this game played out for the full 90 minutes with 11 v 11 because it was a great footballing spectacle and the sending off ruined that, however i don't think there can be any arguments over the sending off, it was a very very silly challenge to make already being on a yellow.

What this game highlights is just how far we have come, Barca are regarded as having the best youth set up in world football, bringing those talents through and we went there and for 45 minutes was playing them comfortably at their own game.

If you are feeling down with Chelsea at the moment turn your attentions to the academy and you will be in for a thrilling end to the season. It is debatable how much improvement the new league set ups at U18 and U21 levels has brought around but what it has created is a bit of league excitement for the end of the season and something to really aim for.

With the win over Barcelona last night Chelsea U19's find themselves in the quarter finals of the NextGen Series with their opponents to be decided on Friday and this is a team that should fear no-one. On top of that the recent win in the FA Youth Cup sees the U18's in the quarter finals of that competition too with a ties against either Derby or Manchester City. 

In the U18's league Chelsea topped their first phase group in style and are still unbeaten in the second phase in the Elite group with 2 draws and a win and will be expected to do well. In the new set up Chelsea will need to finish in the top 3 places of this Elite group to progress to the semi finals and be in with a chance of being crowned U18's league champions a challenge that i am sure they are well up to achieving.

At U21's level Chelsea have a tougher route if they wish to be crowned U21's champions, having narrowly missed out on the Elite group they find themselves in Group 1 where they are currently top after 3 wins and a loss although they have played more games than the 2 below them but they are playing very well so far. To make the semi finals however from Group 1 they would need to finish top in the group and then play off against the top team in group 2 to join the top 3 teams in the Elite group in the semi finals. Not an easy task for sure but one that this group of players can do.

What you will always get at Academy level is great football, desire and commitment from the players and excitement. It is getting harder and harder to justify why these players are not coming through to the first team. So cure your blues blues with the academy, watch the games on Chelsea TV or the highlights on my YouTube, get down to cobham on a Saturday morning to watch the U18's if you can and go and see the U21's if you can because it is going to be an exciting end to the season for the Chelsea academy boys.

Time to ditch 4-2-3-1

Sometimes logic truly goes out of the window, and at Chelsea Football Club that seems to be a pretty regular thing. For years now we have been playing a 4-3-3 formation and it has worked for us very well indeed even though for a lot of the time we have not had the ideal players for that formation. It has been a long time since we had proper wingers that will run at defenses and try to beat their man and until last season we have lacked that creative playmaker, that number 10, who will make things happen behind the 3 forward players.

If you take a look at what we have been playing with recently and analyse it we have been making things harder than they need to be, yes we have had injuries and players away with the African Cup but it does not need to be such a struggle, this has been our team of late:

What you have here is a number of players playing out of position in a formation they are not comfortable with. Ivanovic is a fantastic player but for me he is a much better player as a center back, yes as a full back he has scored goals but positionally he gets caught out far too often Newcastle's second goal at the weekend being a prime example. In this formation you have 2 sitting midfielders who will break up the play and get the ball moving forward again but playing with Lampard and Ramires you have 2 players who are box to box players and will instinctively get forward. Again it has been a pattern of last few games, both players high up the pitch, we lose the ball and the opposition break without any cover from the midfield. Then we have Bertrand playing as a winger, if you are asking him to do a defensive job only as was needed in Munich then fine, but to be using him as a solely attacking job just does not work, he is a left back.

If we had all of our players available to us then the only way to make this formation work for us would be to put out this team:

Here you have 2 proper full backs, 2 proper sitting midfielders who can get the ball forward to the attacking players and 2 proper wide players. What we are not allowing for is the ability to rotate the squad and give players a rest. The bottom line is to not keep trying to put players where they are not comfortable. Play the system that suits the players, not try and force players to play a system that they are not suited to.

Going back to the 4-3-3 now, we may have a small squad this season but playing the 4-3-3 gives us the best opportunity to use our squad to it's fullest. Our strongest team in a 4-3-3 would look something like this:

Again all over the pitch there is balance, players playing in their natural positions to enable them to fully know their roles and deal with any situation that comes up. I truly believe if we were to play with this formation we would again be a truly formidable side and would put teams under serious pressure. But more importantly we would see the nervousness in the side disappear as everyone would be comfortable within their roles in the team.

Also in playing this formation we could play 2 completely separate teams with full balance and strength. Not that we would necessarily have to play this team as it is but it give the chance for rotation of players with some players being very comfortable in a number of positions:

I have no idea why there is such a determination to continue with the 4-2-3-1 as it just is not working for us and if we continue to persist we will not see an upturn in results, any team sees us as a soft touch now and can easily expose us and put us under serious pressure. The time to change is now, switch to the 4-3-3 and focus on making top 4, that is an absolute must for us.

Academy puts first team to shame

This season we have seen more than ever how badly run and poorly organised things are within the hierarchy of the first team. However that does not mean that this football club does not know how to run a football set up well. Our Academy is an example of what can be achieved if set up and run in the correct way.

Firstly and possibly most important is continuity, Neil Bath has been the Academy Director since 2004 and has overseen the most dramatic change in the academy and turned it into something very special indeed. But there is far more to it than that. Whilst Roman, Gourlay ect obviously are interested in the academy and what is does they have no intention of interfering and dictating what goes on in the academy. Neil Bath has had the last 8 years to with the help of the footballing people around to do what he believes is right to make the academy as good as it can be, and unsurprisingly it has worked. 

The academy functions as a whole unit from top to bottom, the philosophy of Chelsea football club is taught from the age of 7 all the way through to the U21's. At the start of the change in academy set up coaches were brought in to make changes which had mixed results but now Chelsea are not only developing players but developing coaches also. Dermot Drummy has moved through the ranks from U16's coach to now being U21's coach, Paul Clement before him went from U18's to Reserves to first team assistant and now is with Carlo at PSG. Steve Holland went from the reserves to assistant for the first team. Adrian Viveash came in at the young age levels and has quickly worked through the U15's, U16's and is now U18's manager and doing very well. This is not progression for the sake of it, these coaches Chelsea are developing and progressing are of a very high standard and deserve to move through the ranks.

The results speak for themselves, every year the standard of player gets higher and higher. We have seen our U18's team look incredibly formidable and this is a young team, we have U16's moved through to U21's football already, we are not afraid to push our better players to be better. Our success in the FA Youth Cup is another indication of the strength at academy level.

The problem is, no matter how good our academy is, when the structure set up around the first team is so poor we are never going to see the real progress of these young players that we should be seeing in them getting into the first team. Time and time again we see players be at the top of their age group all the way up to 18/19 and when it comes to push on it falters.

What the academy SHOULD be showing to Roman and the people surrounding him is what can happen when you let football men dictate the football matters. Gourlay, Buck and Roman may be very good when it comes to business and the business side of football but what qualifies them to understand the running of a successful football club over any other fan on the planet? 

Imagine what would happen if a team of football men were charged with the running of the club overseen by Roman, the football board are accountable to making sure that the club is solid from a football standpoint, using their knowledge of the game to put forward their best choices for managers, players ect. Let Gourlay deal with the business side, the sponsorship the shirt sales, he actually seems pretty good at that but keep away from footballing decisions.

Emanalo is a man who take a lot of criticism, at the end of the day we have no idea of what his involvement is with the poor choices that have been made recently. But what i think he has done well is his ability to bring in the right players, the signings we have been making have been very good indeed.

Lets say for a moment we have a football board consisting of Guus Hiddink as the Director of Football, someone like Pat Nevin who is clearly a very intelligent and articulate man with Chelsea at his heart and Emenalo to continue player scouting. Charged with the job of creating some stability to the club, if actually given the licence to do so i think we would see some results similar to what the academy has produced. Even if it is not these, but just people who know football and how the workings of the football side of the club should be, just anything to create stability and continuity at the club.

So yes, the academy certainly puts the first team to shame, but Roman should use it as an indication of where things are going wrong at first team level and finally address the instability at our club.