It’s hard to imagine a Chelsea side without the likes of John Terry, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard as its key players, but it will be necessary for the club to move on as Andre Villas-Boas has been given the task of rejuvenating our ageing squad.
One of the reasons Carlo Ancelotti was sacked was because he was seen as the wrong man to conduct an overhaul at the club and Roman Abramovich decided to invest £13.3m into 34-year-old Villas-Boas, who will be given time to reshape the squad, according to Dominic Fifield’s piece in the Guardian.
Apparently the board understands that if they were to sack the manager after just five months in the job they will lose face and many would lose faith that any sort of long-term project could be possible at such an impatient outfit.
When Villas-Boas was appointed as the Chelsea boss there was a sense of optimism at Chelsea as they made what was a bold move for a young manager, a manager that was driven enough to break away from the old ways and implement his own philosophy at the club.
The players at the club have largely escaped the blame as the revolving door policy has seen seven different managers take charge at Stamford Bridge and there was a lot of debate in the summer over whether or not Chelsea needed an overhaul and just how drastic did the changes needed to be.
That topic of the debate has arisen again as Chelsea have entered a terrible run of form which has brought back far too many painful memories of Ancelotti’s infamous ‘bad moment’ and the rot cannot be allowed to continue. We’re still in need of investment and we don’t even have to be as extravagant as we were last January when we spent £73.6m on Fernando Torres and David Luiz.
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I’m fairly certain that we will bring in a defender or two when the transfer window opens and could bring Bolton’s Gary Cahill and Atletico Madrid’s Diego Godin, whilst Porto wing-back Alvaro Pereira remains in the club’s sights after failing to sign him during the summer months. I don’t think anyone would argue with bringing in defensive reinforcements as the David Luiz/John Terry partnership is becoming increasingly painful to watch, but everyone will have a different opinion on which players they would like to see brought in.
Neither Nicolas Anelka or Salomon Kalou have played much part for Chelsea so far this season and could be moved on as soon as January, especially as they’re both out of contract in the summer. I’ve heard plenty of fans say that they want to see the back of Florent Malouda, which would be nice, but I reckon we’ll have to hold onto him until the summer for the sake of squad numbers and it’ll be hard to replace attacking players with ones that will be eligible to play in the Champions League at this stage. Didier Drogba will also be available on a free at the end of the season if he doesn’t sign a contract before then, so I’d personally shift him for any amount during the next window as he doesn’t warrant his high wages at present.
