As the 2023/2024 Premier League season was almost halfway over, it yielded many surprises up to that point, whether it was Liverpool cementing themselves in a title charge, Aston Villa looking continuously more likely to book a Champion’s League spot or Everton being docked 10 points for their financial fair play breaches. However, many wouldn’t find it too odd to once again see Chelsea mid table as they prepared to host Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge on December 27th.
Chelsea who in recent history have been very successful, most recently winning the Champions League in 2021 and the Europa League in 2019, however since the departure of owner Roman Abramovic and the subsequent arrival of American owner Todd Bohley the Blues have found themselves with 3 managers and over a billion pounds spent in just over a year and a half yet they only managed to finish 12th last season. This found themselves one point behind historically mid table side Crystal Palace, the Eagles likewise had a slow start to last season finding
themselves near the relegation zone, but since the arrival of manager Roy Hodson many fans have been given a new excitement about the team’s performances with the center back pairing of Mark Guehi and Joachim Anderson finding consistent form in the back and the creativity of Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise really adding more fluidity to their attack.
Going into this contest Chelsea once again was middle of the pack at 11th while Crystal Palacewere only one point behind in 12th. What is the reason for Chelsea’s seemingly out of the blue downfall? Could it be the fans not backing their players? The manager making bad decisions? Or are the players just not good enough?
At a capacity of just over 40,000 Chelsea’s home nearly sells out every game, against Crystal Palace they managed to get an attendance of 39,618. The crowd seemed very excited to see the first start of their new signing Christopher Nkunku, Nkunku suffered a bad knee injury just before the start of the season that saw him having to undergo surgery, fortunately he wasn’t out for long and it only took three games to find himself starting again and he didn’t disappoint as it only took 13 minutes for him to link up with Malo Gusto to get in a dangerous area to set up Mykhailo Mudryk to put Chelsea ahead early. Soccer fan Peter Dockray who I spoke with at the game was in awe with the atmosphere.
“Well, you know I’ve been to many grounds [stadiums] and I have to say it was absolutely buzzing from the start.” Dockray said.
Chelsea hired Mauricio Pochettino back in July and he came with high expectations, historically taking a very underwhelming Tottenham side to the champions league final and winning numerous trophies with PSG in France. Evan O’donoghue (Chelsea fan) really wants to see him succeed.
“I think Poch has a good system, and we just need to figure out the best ones [players] for every role.”
This has seemed to be a trend with 13 new signings and 21 departures including usual starters such as: Mason Mount, Kai Havertz and N’golo Kante.
Peter Dockray believes the issues to be out of the managers control. “Well, I certainly don’t think the manager has the players he would ideally like to have, but I don’t think he’s done a bad job,” Dockray said.
“They [the players] just don’t know how to put the ball in the goal”
This is in line with the stats, according to “understat” Chelsea up to this point in the Premier League have had an xG (expected goals) of 40.4 putting them in 3rd only behind Manchester City and Newcastle, however they’ve only scored 31. The match against Crystal Palace wasn’t too out of character, while Chelsea got by with a 2-1 win there were some big chances missed by Chelsea’s two strikers Nicolas Jackson and Armando Broja.
All in all Chelsea have a very well praised manager, passionate fans and an exciting young squad that can certainly compete against the best. Although their striker situation isn’t ideal currently, better days are sure to come