The Core

[BlueLyon 9,359]

Our main players of the season were Cech, Luiz, Mata, Hazard and Rambo.

The thing Im beggining to ask myself is how is our core so uncomplete?

Teams around world have core of 2/3 players and they build the team around them. They are adoptable, leaders, versatile and trust-worthy. Bayern goes with Lahm, Schweini and Ribery as their core. Real goes with Ramos, Alonso and Ronaldo. Barca goes with Xavi, Iniesta and Messi.

As I said, we go with Luiz, Mata and Rambo/Hazard. They were very important through past seasons, and according to their importance we should build team AROUND them. Like Bayern did around Schweini, Real around Alonso etc.

But our team has very weak core. All of the players have huge potential to be very good. Luiz as defender, Mata as playmaker and Rambo as b2b midfielder. But everyone has extremely weak side too. If you take Schweini or Alonso for example, they are leaders. In true meaning. They will protect team and do the right things. Will Mata or Rambo do that? No. Schweini is versatile, he helps attack and defense. He can pass, tackle even shot. Same goes to Alonso. On other side Mata cant defend. He gets bullied often. Rambo isnt passing master either.

Speaking of such, Luiz is even better example. He is great guy, I love him and all, but he is soo error prone. As our main CB, he should be very trust worthy, calm, leader. Like Kompany, Vidic or Terry (used to be). But Luiz has unnormal ball control for defender, however he makes so many mistakes for a main central back. You cant put young defender along him, because Luiz wont watch after him. We have two types of defenders; one leader who sticks back and is very calm (the core cb player). His partner is more free minded. He is faster, more skilled but less trusty. In our case our Core cb is Luiz who is free minded and that is huge problem for us.

Mata presents great player, but he makes our team unable to play 4:3:3. Rambo cant control midfield simple as that.

Thing is that our core of team is soo uncomplete that we will have to change many things.

[nono 791]

Mikel is the core. Hazard, Mata and Oscar are role players imo.

[Amblève. 4,995]

Schweinsteiger is not a leader. In fact, he's the complete opposite.

[LDN Blue 7,903]

The problem regarding 'building' your team around a certain player or a group of players is the breakdown you have when the player(s) in question are out of the side. Be it through injury, suspension or rotation, you're never going to have them available for every game. We've seen this problem manifest in Liverpool. When you take out the errors of Liverpool in the transfer window, you find that their team is built around Luis Suarez. Once he was taken out, via suspension, the system broke down. This was during his racism ban, not the Ivanovic bite.

We've seen it happen to Barcelona as well. This was arguably one of Messi's best seasons in a Barcelona shirt, on personal merit. However as we saw, once he was nullified in the European format, there was no way for them to come back. In the first leg v. Bayern, they did well to dominate and mark Messi, but everyone knows the little Argentine wasn't 100%. That showed in the second leg when he failed to make the pitch.

Manchester United have been successful because they don't build, in the long term around a single player or group. They do this in the short term (a la, Ronaldo/Rooney/Van Persie) but Ferguson knew that should that single player then come off form he would be in trouble. Hence his plan was to build his team around a system. A system that wasn't dependent on an individual player. It was a system where you could take any player in his arsenal and slot them into that system which continued to show results.

Now you could argue we've had a long term "core" of Terry, Lampard & Drogba. I would disagree, to a certain extent. Yes, they've been pertinent into our squad for their ability to be the big occasion players and leaders (though I seldom use 'leader' with Drogba in Chelsea colours), but we always had a system which they were important, but not relied upon. For example, when Anelka was drafted in for Drogba, he ended up winning the Golden Boot in 2008. When Lampard was unavailable we had Ballack and so on.

I find teams that rely on their one player will show weakness. Aston Villa are case & point; once they lost Benteke against us, we capitalized.

You need important players, no doubt. Players of character, leadership, ability. Guys who you could say inherit the values of the club and are role models for incoming players. But I think building a team around those characters is risky business, and teams should be built around a specific system.

[Strike 6,958]

I think the spine of the 'new' team is yet to emerge but that doesn't mean it's not there. Cech,Azpilicueta, Luiz, Mata, Hazard are increasingly becoming part of that new spine and with 1 or 2 good additions (especially CM), the core team should be fine.

[Mceachran 109]

How many more years does Cech have in him?! I say it's Mata, Luiz, and IvaOscarHazardRami

I can't comment on the OP comparisons since I think they were illl founded in a "grass is always greener" sort of way.

[Muzchap 8,964]

Schweinsteiger is not a leader. In fact, he's the complete opposite.

I think he meant on the pitch? Old 'Pig' certainly does put himself around a bit and runs for 90 minutes...

[Amblève. 4,995]

I think he meant on the pitch? Old 'Pig' certainly does put himself around a bit and runs for 90 minutes...

Ramires is also running around for 90 minutes. Does that make him a leader? Nope.

Schweinsteiger doesn't have a clue how to motivate and lead his team. It still baffles me, tbh, how Bayern won the CL with Lahm and Schweinsteiger as their main leaders...

[OneMoSalah 8,611]

Schweinsteiger is not a leader. In fact, he's the complete opposite.

This.

Anyway our core for the next while will be Cech/Courtois, Azpi, Luiz, Mikel, Ramires, Mata, Oscar and Hazard. Possibly add Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne eventually too.

If we can get some good players for our squad too like Fergie did at United, we will be laughing though, as it helps A LOT to have good players who can step up when players aren't playing well/injuries/suspensions.

When the cunts didn't think Rooney was playing well enough they played Kagawa or Welbeck as the 10 behind RVP or RVP behind Hernandez/Welbeck. If we had a higher quality of subs for the likes of Mata or Oscar we'd be able to rest them. City had 4 strikers, all better than Torres, at one point last season, they could bring them on if players from their 'core' were under-performing.

Would help if we could get some high quality players and manage to keep them all happy without them all playing but if you can't do that you run the risk of them becoming upset.

[Blue_Legendary 1]

I really think Chelsea need a world class DM more than anything. Possibly a deep lying playmaker since Ramires really looks uncomfortable when Chelsea are trying to break down defenses. If Chelsea get that and a decent striker I think the Chelsea Spine would be good enough to win the Premier League. We also need more useful squad players. The good news is that now that Chelsea got rid of some fringe players they should sign/promote new squad players. I think Ruben Loftus Cheek can do a good job in the first team. From what I saw he looked like one of those Elite youngsters who would do a good job.