He’d already made it clear he was staying at Chelsea when Mourinho came calling and yesterday Michael Essien confirmed that with the agreement of a new deal keeping him at the club for a further year. The 25 year old midfielder, who signed from Lyon in a £24.4million transfer in 2005, has agreed an improved deal with a year’s extension, which will hopefully see him at Chelsea until 2013.

The ‘Bison’ made his official debut for Chelsea on 21^st August 2005 against Arsenal, and has since become one our more influential players. His competitiveness and formidable presence not only strengthens the Chelsea midfield but his versatility has also seen him utilised just about everywhere on the pitch.

On the down side, he’s been known to go in a little harder than the opposition might like and this has previously been to our cost. The 2-match ban for his over-enthusiastic tackle on Hamann back in December 2005, for example, resulted in a suspension from the 2^nd round Champions League tie against Barcelona, which we subsequently lost 3-2 on aggregate. However, whilst this sort of challenge appears to have resulted in some pretty negative opinions of him, Essien is very clear that although he’s quite happy to be regarded as a player who’ll ‘unsettle’ anyone without the required amount of backbone, this doesn’t equate to any malicious intent in his game. And to be fair to him, he did apologise for the challenge on Hamann and I don’t exactly recall the same sort of public outcry when Essien himself was on the receiving end of a pretty poor challenge from Reo-Coker, which saw the Ghanaian sidelined for three weeks.

The pluses definitely outweigh the odd minus with a player like Essien though – and there have been plenty of positives since he arrived at Chelsea. Reputation aside, Essien’s had his fair share of positive accolades during his time at Chelsea as well. He was nominated for the FIFA World Player of the Year award in 2005, 2006 and 2007; voted the 3^rd best African Footballer of the Year in 2005 and 2006 and nominated again in 2007, coming second that year to Kanoute; nominated for the Ballon d’Or in 2005, 2006 and 2007; won the 2006 BBC African Footballer of the Year award; and in the 2006-2007 season, Essien was voted Chelsea’s Player of the Year, making him the first African to receive the honour.

Carrying on that positive note, he might only have scored ten goals in the 91 games played for us, but Michael Essien certainly knows how to make people sit up when he hits the back of the net. His curling equaliser at home to Arsenal in December 2006 has to be his most memorable goal for most, although for me personally, his stand-out goal has to be the dramatic late winner away to Valencia in the Champions League quarter final the same year. Despite having just come back from several weeks out with a knee injury, Essien flew down the wing from his position at right-back, smashing the ball past Canizares to seal a 1-2 victory on the night and a 2-3 win on aggregate. Bloody awesome!

And we’ve pinned him down for another year! Great bit of business on Chelsea’s part.

Filed under: Current Players, Rants