Jose Mourinho faces a major battle to turn around Chelsea’s faltering season. Despite the season only being 5 games in, Chelsea have already suffered as many defeats as they did in the entire 2014-15 season.
Chelsea have been plagued with controversy this season with the furor surrounding Eva Carneiro and the team physio Jon Fearn, and although this is not a primary reason for the slump in form, it does highlight the fragile nature of the club at present.
As results have not improved since, the question will surface, how much have the team stopped playing for Mourinho and what impact has his treatment of Eva Carneiro had on the atmosphere at the club?
What is more worrying is the sluggish nature of the performances of key players. Players such as Terry, Matic, Fabregas, Hazard and Costa formed part of a solid spine, that produced consistent and at times edge of your seat excitement, have all struggled to match that same level of performance.
In fairness it is rare to have so many key players struggling for form at the same time, Hazard who had 9 assists last year has only one so far this season. Fabregas managed 18 assists last season has 0 so far this time around.
Chelsea conceded 32 goals in 38 games have already conceded 12 this season. The most striking dip in performance has been that of Ivanovic, he has looked slow and making mistakes in a manner that you would not expect him to make.
He is going forward and then lacking the pace and stamina to get back and if any player is in real danger of losing his place in the team it would have to be him. These stats are quite telling when analysing the problems facing Jose Mourinho and the level of work required to turn things around.
Chelsea have looked very sluggish on the pitch and as Mourinho has conceded, the late start to pre season has meant not everybody has reacted the way they would have expected. Looking at Mourinho’s past record he has not stayed at a club for more than 3 seasons and the third season is always one in which he faces major problems, this was the case in his first spell at Chelsea and also at Real Madrid. He surely has his work cut out to transform the current season and more importantly on a personal level to shake off the “3rd season syndrome” tag that has already been attributed to him.
