Post-season review - Chelsea 2013/14

[The Skipper 20,593]

Great post, I agree with most. But what would it say about our season if Liverpool will win the title?

They finished 7th last season, they spend much less money and have a lesser squad. I think it won't look good for us and for City if Liverpool wins it. It would look like we failed to create that gap between teams that spend so much, and a team that doesn't. A lot of credit goes to Liverpool and what they did, but still.

Managerial stability, and believing in their manager's plan and philosophy.

[Styles 9,790]

We've been more competitive than we have been in YEARS so it's a success. We still have issues but compared to recent years we're comfortably better so that's an improvement.

[Bir_CFC 3,455]

Forget success or failure. We should be looking for improvement. We won the CL in 2012 but actually regressed as a team. We had turned into a cup team these last few years. I personally think the league is the best barometer of success because it's a much larger sample size and the cream eventually rises to the top. Unlike in cup competitions where a bad draw, a bad bounce or an off day can result in a trophy-less season or the opposite.

In that sense, we have improved considerably. I still want trophies, everyone does but I can live with a year without one because I see the improvement and can see trophies on the horizon in the near future.

[Beirut_Blues 306]

i think its too early to be talking abt failure...

still fighting for the league and didnt even start the QF of the champions league so i see no point of discussing failure.

[Fulham Broadway 16,392]

There seems to be a lot of resignation that its all over.

As far as the league is concerned you have to keep fighting and hoping, what are we arsenal ?

We win our 6 games - 87 points. Liverpool win 5 including againt City, and lose to us -86 points

Out of Citys 8 games they lose to Liverpool and draw against Everton -86 points. Carefree. Champions.

The CL is a knockout, and by its very nature totally unpredictable. Potentially English and European Champions.

Stranger things have happened.

[GodZola 630]

Not sure if success is the correct word but more so improvement, fans with short term impatient thinking will see this season as a failure if we don't end the season with any silverware - therefore no success.

The balanced long term patient fans will see this season as an improvement because we are exactly where we wanted us to be - closing the gap in the PL (& that's not over by a long chalk yet) decent run in CL all with a young squad that are still learning their trade, all this with some obvious deficiencies in the squad that will be addressed during the summer.

Then we also have the best goalkeeper in the world (imho!) returning, José will virtually have his own squad to choose from, looks like he is still learning about some of the personalities this season, so all the foundations are being laid now for a very bright successful future. I said before I think there has been long term objectives set out and agreed by Roman and José, this years has already been met, next year it goes up another notch and I think eventually you will see the shackles come off with a style of football that Roman craves.

Every Chelsea fan should be excited about the future because we are without question heading the right way.

[1chelsea 864]

Lets see what Mourinho thinks about it. He said Arsenal are failure specialist, Benitez was a loser because we end up in 3th last season.

Failure.

this expected from u and your supporters why not go for change and surprise us all. Well u lost your chance in doing that

[robsblubot 3,222]

For me, success does not necessarily demand silverware, depending on circumstance. The season isn't over yet, so say if we don't make CL next season, or even a 4th place, will be very very far from a "success." On the other hand, reaching a CL final-win or not- would definitely be considered a success by anyone with half a brain.

However, I must confess that I am jealous of the way Liverpool have been performing. And it's not just their striking force (Sturrige, irony not lost on me), but the way they try and keep the football, movement, even player rotation... They've lost their only proper holding mid (thought that would be the end of) and are still topping the league!

[1chelsea 864]

Now we never been talked about until the return of the king, we be hated by too many even some Chelsea fans who don't want Jose here, of which some are there in our mist, am so happy we our achievement in terms of fear factor and fighting at the top of the league not struggling to get 4th place. If not for shit striker who don't know where the post is this story or thread won't exist

Damn

"SUCCESS"

with a trophy or not

[Jase 43,479]

Arsenal 8 trophyless seasons. Thats why they are specialist. 8 seasons. This season is just one season.

You seem to be aware of that and yet you associate us/Mourinho with "specialist in failure" in that post earlier...

About the consistence, I dont think we are more consistent. Since december we dropped points to Villa, West Ham and Crystal Palace. Outplayed City at Etihad, just to play like shit days later against the same team.

Granted our results in the last 3 league games have been a bit dodgy but let's not forget before that we were on a 14-game unbeaten run. In those 14 games, we won 11 and drawn 3 where one of it came at the start in that 0-0 draw against Arsenal while another in 'one of those games' against West Ham. Frustrating as it is beating the top sides but not the smaller ones, we were never going to win all our games then and bound to drop points, one way or another. Some people would still like to moan either way anyway but 11 wins and 3 draws in 14 games is still a strong run, like it or not.

To put things into perspective on the 'consistency' point, the 14-game unbeaten run was our longest since 2007/08 under Avram Grant, when we went 21 games without defeat from mid-December till end of the season. Additionally within that 14 games, we won 5 games in a row (should have been 8 if it weren't for that ridiculous 0-0 draw with West Ham), which was our best winning run in the league since the back end of the 2010/11 season. Seeing us with the record of 'WWWWW DWWDW' is way better than the inconsistency of 'WWLWD WDLWL' or 'DLWWD DDLWL of the last two seasons especially, where a run of results like those were quite common.

[AndersonBLUE 819]

I'll come back to this thread at the end of the season, bit premature isn't it?

[Laylabelle 9,296]

If we still have Jose by the end be a success though saying that half way through the 2nd season seems to be the sacking point....

Neither a success or a failure seeing as it aint over yet...seeing as last we werent sure if we'd make top 4..success on that part.More frustrating then anything I guess....aint over yet..be surprised if we do win it...loose that win the CL instead that be funky...hey ho team to build on

[BlueLion. 21,491]

Great post, I agree with most. But what would it say about our season if Liverpool will win the title?

They finished 7th last season, they spend much less money and have a lesser squad. I think it won't look good for us and for City if Liverpool wins it. It would look like we failed to create that gap between teams that spend so much, and a team that doesn't. A lot of credit goes to Liverpool and what they did, but still.

Liverpool are having an absolute freak of a season. Based entirely on their attacking success. And fair play to them.

[Henrique 9,133]

We've been more competitive than we have been in YEARS so it's a success. We still have issues but compared to recent years we're comfortably better so that's an improvement.

Improvement doesnt mean succes.

[couris 232]

Failure. To much money invested for a failed offensive display.

[mannyfreshh 164]

I have a feeling were gonna win the PL.

[Mohammed Seif 1,451]

So apparently some people think it is a failure because there is now silverware. Though I respect that but it just doesn't make much sense to me. Every team or goes through a life cycle with different phases. They develop and rise, reach their maturity and stability stage, then they decline. Everything in life has a cycle. I believe that in every phase, expectations are different, hence the targets to be achieved. So to fairly judge this season and say whether it is a success or failure, one must know which phase Chelsea is in and what is expected in that phase.

Objectively speaking we are not at our peak nor our trough. Jugding on the past 2 seasons, I can say confidently we are doing better this year. So we are definitely in a rising phase ( call it recovery, transitional or anything else). We have a new manager, with a new system, and new young players. We are still going to buy new players by summer. Base on that I can say we are at the early stages of a rising phase.

In such a phase, who really expects a team to win one more championships. Certainly not Mourinho or the board. Mourinho said that many times. And though he is not a GOD like some people make him seem to be and he makes mistakes and gets it wrong, but he is still one of the very best managers out there and has proved that many times. If a team in such an early stage wins a trophy, it will basically be a bonus. Next year I expect the board and Mourinho to set different objectives for the team. I doubt it will be winning more than one title, but I can guarantee that the objectives would be higher than this season's.

Only when a team reaches high levels of cohesion and maturity, you would expect them to continuously win titles and silverware. If Manchester City does not win more than one trophy, it is failure. They have been building a team and heavily investing for a while now. Arsenal is just a total failure. No stable competitive team since the days of Henry, Berkamp, ljundberg, Pires, Overmars and others. If Manchester United does not manage to qualify to UCL it is a failure. Yes they are in a transitional phase, but they have the same set of developed mature players who won last season's EPL. If they don't qualify then they are definitely in a decline stage and they need to make some major changes to start recovering. If we were in the same position as United, then definitely we can argue that we have failed.

I have a question for the people who think that we should win trophies this year. One what basis did you come to that conclusion? Is it on the basis that we have a JUST had one of the top managers this year? Or is it on the basis of the set of players we have who are young and still inconsistent? Or is it on the basis that we FAILED last year to do anything in the UCL, played against much lower teams in Europa and won it and BARELY qualified for this year's UCL? Don't get me wrong, I want us to still win the UCL and EPL this year, but if we don't I would hardly think of it as a failure.

[Barbara 15,149]

The thing is success is a very subjective concept.

I'll give a brief personal example. I used to work in a worldwide coorporation, with a lot of responsibility and recognition. I wasn't as political as the job demanded, but that could be easily fixed and the promising career I had there could still take me very far. The wages were good and I had some power - designed every process in the Canadian branch (the whole company in the country) and whatsnot, worked with more than ten different countries, controlling process on them. Got recognized by many big shots in the company, collected a few awards - some worldwide worth - and a few other things. Success for a 26yo woman that wasn't even majored on business administration, right? No.

I'd rather work much less even if meant have less money and do something I was passionate about, as well as having time, health and a stress-free life to enjoy whatever money would afford me. At age 29 I said enough is enough, vowed myself to never work in a coorporation again and started another major in early age education. Now I teach 15 four year-old - in a Canadian school nonetheless - and I have overprotective moms questioning every decision I make about their little precious spoiled-rotten children. I finally found the success I craved. It's long term for me because my life quality, my happiness, feeling accomplished and trying to do something for each of those little ones that will spend some months with it pays it all off.

Another person will read this post and thing I'm pathetic, stupid, silly, or someone who just lacks ambition. That's nothing wrong with their assessmemt, again, success is a subjective matter.

On that note and about this club and this season, I don't really judge our success on the trophies we may raise or not. We sort of accidently raised the last three trophies we won (maybe except the FA Cup). We were the underdogs, the team who's played ugly, the dark horse. While it doesn't take the credit away from our honours then, it takes away the enjoyment. The excitment of beating Barcelona and then Bayern of course made up for the pragmatic, defensive, coward approach we had back then. But shouldn't my team give me 'the feels' whether it loses or wins? We played boring, predictable, limited, high-risky (in the bad way) kind of football that made me nervous, but I rarely found myself being entertained by the football we showed. A balance is the ideal situation and I think that's where we're going. We might not immediately be (but I believe in the future we will be because that's clearly Roman's objective) as entertaning as Barcelona and Bayern - and even Real Madrid - in their best days in the past five years, but that's the goal and Mourinho proved with his Real Madrid side that he can provide that - even though some moaners love to talk about what they don't know and say otherwise. That team was exciting to watch, but it had weaknesses, just like Barcelona - who lost to us - and Bayern - who also lost to us - had and still have.

So when I look at the progress in Hazard and Oscar (the Brazilian suffers a lot with the winter, but spring is coming and he might blossom again, pun intended) both technically as well as tactically; the recover process that made Terry one of the best - if not the best - English CB in activity, Cahill's progress, Azpilicueta rising, defensive stability, bringing Matic and eating our pride for letting him go, fixing 80% of our midfield issues. And with the exception of Terry - who's older than the others - those guys are very young and their best days are definitely yet to come (not sure about Cahill, but I'm sure he can progress some more). BBC commentators said during the Arsenal massacre that teams should be warned because that was Chelsea in transition. That's the message sent regardless of trophies or not. That's the Chelsea under development, what should they expect of a Chelsea a few steps ahead in the process next season? If now it's a Chelsea that face any top team in the world equally, a team that nobody wants to draw or to play, a team that made the Bridge a fortitude again, so that teams crumble even before they step foot in that pitch because they know that's OUR domain, we rule it, what will this Chelsea be come next season? How come can that not be a success? They look at the man at our dugout and they know they're fucked because he's got the tactics that will kill them and they know we'll be much stronger.

Do we still have deficiencies that should be addressed both technically and tactically? Of course we do, but this team is way too young from the pivot on and we have almost literally no striker at all. Eto'o is old, but also has a great responsibility imo for us fighting to be where we are now. We need to add quality in some positions, but I think as needed as that, we need to mold the young talents we already have. Hazard, Oscar, Schurrle, Salah, Willian need to mature and grow a winning spirit and a fighter character. They just couldn't handle the pressure, they couldn't separate in their minds the EPL from the UCL in the weekend matches prior to playing in Europe. They're still young and I'm not sure all of them will prove that they can become real champions, the kind of guys that have ambition running in their veins. I hope all of them succeed here with that because they'll need it. Mourinho doesn't tolerate weak characters in his team, unless they have very marginal roles.

But still I look at what this season showed, and I look at our rivals, at their fans and I see fear. I like the feeling of my team being feared and not only respected. Even some of the respect we've earned had been lost in the last few years. It's been earned back and if we'll be lucky enough to have all of this crowned with a trophy, all that much better although it may be yet soon to say (I don't think we have more than 20% chances of winning either title). But even if we don't, it doesn't erase this. The feeling is there, the message has beens sent.

I hate using the expression glory hunter, but if the only expectation and the only acceptable thing from the club you support is trophies, then I can't think of another title... unless the club has built a team that reaches the levels or those other clubs aforementioned. But isn't that exactly what we're trying to build here? Or does anyone think Barcelona and Bayern were built in a season? Or that a team like Real Madrid has the effect they have because of a couple of trophies? We've won all trophies that were there to be won. we've conquered it all, now it's time we dominate, but for domination to come, you have to build... and that's what we've done this season and don't fool yourselves, there's more to be built and I think the team won't be at the top of its abilities and productions for another couple of years, but I do believe we'll enter next season as clean favorites to win whatever competition we enter. If that's not success, I don't know what is, no matter how subjective the concept may be.