Connect with us

Current Players

Former Chelsea pair join the Anelka criticism bandwagon

Following Chelsea’s defeat to Liverpool at the weekend, there have been many critical views of the performance given by Luiz Felipe Scolari’s team. You lose your first home game for 86-matches and suddenly the knives are out. The likes of Jose Bosingwa and Florent Malouda didn’t have their best games and now the same people that were singing their praises a week or so ago are questioning their right to be in the Chelsea team.

The main target of the critics was, predictably, Nicolas Anelka.  Although I’m aware he wasn’t completely at the races on Sunday, it just seems so predictable that he would be the man to get criticised. The whole Chelsea team fails to perform and Anelka becomes the scapegoat.  I’d put a lot of football betting money on the fact that if Didier Drogba put in exactly the same performance, he wouldn’t receive half  the negative press.

However, as it is, Anelka is the man receiving the brunt of the criticism. Former Chelsea man David Lee says that the player is ‘too hit and miss’ to warrant a starting berth.  He went on to say that the Chelsea pitch is ‘too small’ for Anelka who needs a lot of space to work in. Another former Blues player echoed similar sentiments. Gareth Hall says that  although Anelka is an ‘outstanding striker’, he is by no way ‘convinced by him’.

In my opinion, it seems that people are still holding the penalty miss in the Champions League final against Anelka. This is because, overall, he has had a good start to the season – as have Chelsea. The Frenchman has grabbed himself five goals and was involved in a very impressive run at the start of this campaign. Yes, he was poor against Liverpool, but so were a lot of players. In the drubbing of Middlesbrough though, Anelka was superb and showed exactly what he can bring to this Chelsea team.

That’s why I call it an ‘Anelka criticism bandwagon’, because I don’t think those doing the criticising look at the big picture. One or two bad performances don’t make him a bad player.

The same can be said for the Chelsea team as a whole. Trawling through the reaction to the Liverpool defeat makes it seem like it was the fourth defeat in a row or something.  All of a sudden there is doom and gloom at Chelsea. One home defeat in over four years is hardly the sign of a team that needs to panic is it?

It’s not as if Liverpool thumped Chelsea either. They won 1-0 with a deflected goal and the reality was that it just wasn’t going to be the home side’s day. This happens in football. The football odds still have Chelsea as title favourites and rightly so. If anything, this defeat could make the team stronger. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the defeat to Liverpool turned out to be the only one of the season at Stamford Bridge.

By Thomas Rooney – A sports writer who blogs about football betting

Categories

Archives

Blue is the colour

TheChelseaBlog.org is an honest insight to the World of Chelsea FC. Not always pretty, sometimes rather cynical, but always realistic.









Calendar

October 2008
M T W T F S S
« Sep   Nov »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
Chelsea News



Chelsea Blog FaceBook Icon Chelsea Blog Twitter
Chelsea News

More in Current Players