No, The Answer Is Not Aguero

Även publicerad på VitalChelsea.

This is not about Kun Aguero, though my views on bringing in a player (whatever quality) that has accomplished fairly little and demanding £200,000 a week is well known. It is about the two very obvious and very well known things we again had to emphasise watching Chelsea playing the brave tiggers from the north yesterday.

First, we will see it many more times this season, especially at the Bridge. Teams coming to SW6 and parking the bus, not at the designed parking arena but on the green pitch. The aptly coined phrase (by José Mourinho about Liverpool) will be a very regular feature this season again. Because everyone knows that it works against Chelsea. It does not always reward the parkers with points, (often enougth though) but with huge frustration among Chelsea fans and players. Few teams, less than a handful will come to us and play any other tactics, and Chelsea simply have to find the necessary answer to force managers to think in other veins and employ other tactics in future. Until we do, parked buses will be the staple food except when Arsenal or Man U comes, and maybe one or two other brave teams.

NO, the answer is not buying another player with qualities so many claim Chelsea does not possess but Chelsea do possess. Usually framed within the word creativity or even worse, width.

Hull benched there best player Geovanni yesterday in order to make sure the parked bus stayed parked. They hoped for that lucky counter-attack and they got it in an extremely lucky way after a crooked shot hit one Chelsea player and his block hardly hit the knee of Mikel, I think, and landed in front of a totally open and at first perplexed Stephen (I can not stand him) Hunt that easily could poke the ball into goal. The very critical must wonder where was the cover of Hunt, but there is simply really no way you can defend against pinball situations.

Hull played but three central defensive players in midfield and at first it worked a dream as Chelsea played straight into their gameplay. Instead of getting them to move sideways, or even move at all, the Hull first line of defence just waited for the Chelsea players to run and play into their trap. Covered by a couple of lighthouses in the back that surpassed themselves, Michael Turner had a great game. Everyone knows that Chelsea want to go straight onto goal and that was exactly what Phil Brown expected (and just everyone will follow his tactical lead the rest of the season unless we break their habit).

In the second half Ballack came on and Essien replaced Mikel, which brought about a change that forced Hull`s first maginot line to be movable not only like a fussball game, and Chelsea quickly took control. (Remember how the Germans in WWII defeated the impregnable Maginot, by simply going past it). Chelsea started to play not only forward but crosses and were for a while able to get the trap to move around and at moments break up.

So the answer is getting Chelsea to move and mix up the play much more, and primarily use pace in attacking instead of the walk-about football first half so often displayed. But it must be done an entire game which is very hard work. No time to relax. It is hard, very hard indead when the other team just stands waiting, but it has to be done. It is also a game of patience, to get the defending team to tire of their own tactics and want to play football again. Instead it is very easy to push forward and within seconds the defenders have packed the box with 9 players making it impossible to get in there with the ball under control. Not even the best ball dribbler in the world can hold control of a ball surrounded by four huge players that know that they hardly have to move to make the ball bounce off one of them.

The answer is not creativity in that context (most often used to mean dribbling and passing one player), it is a different kind of play from Chelsea. Nobody can even accuse us of not knowing what we are to expect from our opponents, especially at the Bridge.

Second. Chelsea created many, many chances against Hull and we have in games we have been held frustrated other times to. As long as chances are created I do not think the answer is opening the purse. (And Yes, I do know how frustrating it is for us that only watch the games).

It is not another player Chelsea need. It is a major improvement in the ratio chances to scored goals. We can not, like against Hull, create some 30 or even more opportunities for us to finish off the game with a beautiful goal that honestly was intended as a pass in over time.

Chelsea must become a much more efficient team. Drogba is a great forward,one of the very best, but he needs his 5-6 chances for every goal he produces. That is too much. The others are even more inefficient. And yet we have at least three players capable of producing more than 20 goals each this season!

So either we beef up the set piece conversion rate or the individual players conversion rate. It is not about getting new players that may or may not fit into Chelsea`s play or group. Chelsea is all about team play, we are not a Barcelona with individual artists playing as a team. That might be a goal for the club but needs a totally different group of players and many years into the future. Carlo Ancelotti has to work with what Chelsea is now and today. A team, maybe the strongest of all. Despite being poor in converting chances Chelsea proved our ability to keep on working as a team and finally breaking down the other team, probably our strongest quality the last 5-6 years, sans dec-feb under Scolari last season. No team in the world can relax when playing Chelsea. Our character as a team simply does not allow that.

Efficiency must be better, individually and as a team. Exactly how to manage that is the biggest challenge for Carlo Ancelotti and Butch Wilkins, not how to play a diamond midfield.

Look at Arsenal and Manchester United when it comes to efficiency. If we ever are to look elsewhere for inspiration. We probably create even more chances than they do, but lack their instinct in converting them.

Chelsea do not lack creativity. Just yesterday there where many brilliant moments of individual creativity from many Chelsea players, from Ballack, Drogba, Bosingwa, Cole even Anelka (though that miss….). Lampard was not himself at all. But the creativity is sure not something Chelsea players lack, but they do not utilise it as often as they can either. Again the team comes first, but there is room for much more of the creativity and that does in my book not stand for only dribbling your opponent - far from it. Creativity is so much more, seeing the right opening, the choice between a through-ball or a cross at the right moment, a small flick with feet or body to make the opponent move the wrong way etc.

Chelsea also must start to develop a killer instinct. We have started the last two games very well, though after the brief good start both games went backwards for us after the first ten minutes. In both games had we been efficient we should have scored early and started to dominate both in the protocol and on the field. We did not. I claim Chelsea lack the necessary killer instinct.

And when we have equalised after the other team scored against us, we must keep on scoring. Manchester United are experts on this, they never sit back after taking the lead, they keep on drumming on, especially against teams of lesser quality. Chelsea must learn to do this. Siralex complained bitterly after the Community Shield that they should have been 3-4 goals up after the first half. Sure, if they had been able to score on every opportunity, easily forgetting that Chelsea could/should have scored twice in the opening minutes.

I do not see the need for any other player, I do need and hope to see more from what is already in the team - and I have not forgotten that Malouda, Zhirkov, Essien, Mikel, Deco and more, also have and can show great creativity with the already mentioned.

Efficiency, killer instinct, personal creativity at an even higher level and a tactic that does not allow the other team to wait us out is the things I hope to see Chelsea develop this season, then things will be very nice for us come May. We are favourites and just about every other team will play us like that, we will not be able to play our choice of football very often (it really does take two to tango), but we will still be winners many more times than not. I am not worried, not at all - not as long as we create this number of chances.