Before the beginning of the 2015/16 Barclays Premier League season, most pundits put their money on Chelsea to successfully defend their title. With just five games into the season, the champions have only collected 4 points and they currently occupy the 17th position on the log. No one saw this coming, but it has been a catastrophic start for the West Londoners. It is still early days with 33 games still to play, but are the champions already out of the title challenge?
This has been Chelsea’s worst start since 1986, where Jose Mourinho’s team have the worst defense in the league, having conceded 12 goals in 5 games. Last season, it took until December for The Blues to concede as many goals and they finished the season with only 3 defeats.
One of the longest serving players, Branislav Ivanovic has been atrocious this season with the likes of Jefferson Montero of Swansea and Bakary Sako of Crystal Palace proving that age might be catching up with the Serbian defender. Chelsea fans have slammed their manager for not shifting Cesar Azpilicueta to his original right back position and play Baba Rahman on the left side of defense. In football, they say strikers win games and a strong defense wins titles.
This proved to be true last season when The Blues were the team to concede fewer goals. With Mourinho’s defense out of sorts thus far this season, fans around the world are starting to wonder if their club will be able to turn things around and try to catch up with Manchester City for the title challenge.
In the first half of last season, Chelsea was rampant against every opponent that came their way. In the second half however, their form dipped and they managed to grind out results. One can argue that their current form is the continuation of last season’s second half. Last season’s new signings were vital in Chelsea’s championship winning season. In the summer transfer window, they signed 5 players and thus far they are still trying to find their feet in the club.
The Chelsea manager asserted that the champions are suffering from low confidence after a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Everton and to add to their woes, their shot stopper, Thibaut Courtois, will be on the sidelines for between 2-3 months with a knee injury he sustained at training after the international break.
There is no doubt that Chelsea has one of the best players in England and should Mourinho get his lads back in form, there is no doubt they will be fighting to catch up with Manchester City at the summit of the log table. Question is, is there still time to catch up as they are already 11 points adrift of the leaders?
