Chelsea: Premier League 2013/14 preview

Jose Mourinho

Jose Mourinho’s homecoming kicks off this weekend against newly promoted Hull City Tigers. The “mellowed” one has thus far stayed true to his word without causing much havoc just yet and Chelsea, for once, showed some good form in the pre-season winning six matches out of seven and more importantly came through without any major injuries to any player.

This is a club which has finished fourteen points behind Champions Manchester United in the last season, hasn’t won the league in three years and yet the bookies seem to favor it to win the league going into the season.

Chelsea have been surprisingly low-key this summer window, spending about £26 million which is the one of the lowest they have ever spent after Roman Abramovich took over the club (granted the transfer window is still open). Much of this can be attributed to the youth program under the club’s technical director, Michael Emenalo.

Arguably, the two most important additions to the squad this season are the incoming loanees, Romelu Lukaku and Kevin de Bruyne (three if you add Tomas Kalas to that list). The only significant buys this summer are long term target André Schürrle and Marco van Ginkel.

Schurrle, who has 25 caps for Germany, has scored 16 times in 54 matches last season from the wings and is a fast, direct player who likes to defend and break quickly on the counter. He seems to be an upgrade over Victor Moses and gives a different option as opposed to the other players in his role.

Van Ginkel is a box-to-box midfielder with good physicality and his calm distribution in the midfield solves the problem Chelsea had last season in circulating the ball from midfield to attack.

Formation, Tactics and Pre-Season

The team’s formation seems to be pretty straight forward and there are no surprises here. Mourinho started with 4-2-3-1 in the first two matches of Asia tour with wholesale changes at halftime and a change in team shape to 4-3-3.

Roughly speaking, Mourinho’s 4-3-3 (4-2-1-3) and 4-2-3-1 are more or less same, orientation of the midfield triangle being the only difference. The interesting part is the personnel deployed for the attacking trio/quartet. Mourinho has stated that he sees Mata as an inverted winger, a left footed player playing on the right flank, as opposed to the No.10 role in which the Spaniard flourished under Rafa Benitez last season.

With Eden Hazard/Schürrle on left flank, it leaves Oscar and Kevin de Bruyne for the advance position in the midfield triangle. While both are hugely talented players with enormous potential, each offer a different skill set to this role.

Brazilian Oscar has been shifted to wings under Scolari for most part in recent games but under the former coach Mano Menez, he wore the No.10 jersey as the side’s creative midfielder but more importantly played a selfless role in the midfield while Neymar and Hulk (two inverted wingers) drift infield from either flanks.

The Brazilian is also a decent defender, famously marking Pirlo out of the Champions League game at Stamford Bridge. De Bruyne, who had a brilliant pre-season, is a more attacking option whose lateral movement causes problems for the opposition.

In this respect, his game play is reminiscent of Ozil’s at Real Madrid. While both are equally prolific, Oscar might be given a bigger role due to more experience in Premier League and by being a better defensive option than the latter.