Tackling King: Midfield enforcer Morgan Schneiderlin would be perfect for Jose Mourinho’s masterplan

Seemingly taking their cue from last season’s title winners, Chelsea are attempting to play out –and, presumably, win trophies – this campaign with a wafer-thin and under-talented range of central midfielders.

With Jose Mourinho weirdly reluctant to recreate last season’s successful experiment of using David Luiz in the holding role, his current selection of midfielders reads thusly: John Obi Mikel, Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Ramires (Marco Van Ginkel was recently sidelined for the foreseeable future).

Of the above four players, two, albeit in their different ways, appear demonstrably inadequate at the top level: Michael Essien, who relied so heavily on his imperious physicality, has been immobilised by injury, and John Obi Mikel, to the naked eye, appears to possess little or nothing in the way of athleticism, intelligence, aggression, invention or force of personality – in short, he seems to have no business as an high-level central midfielder.

Of the other two, Frank Lampard, a fine, if Britishly limited, player, will be 36 on his next birthday, while Ramires’s best form seems to come in flashes and bursts as opposed to the sustained, match- or season-dominating stretches that mark out the very best in his position.

With all this is mind, then, it would be little surprise to see everyone’s favourite serial referee abuser, Jose Mourinho, go on the hunt for midfield reinforcements when the New Year rolls around.

And with Juan Mata, Oscar, Eden Hazard, and the rest ensuring that the club is more than well-stocked in the creative department, it is likely to be a player in the ‘destroyer’ mould than will be top of the list.

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With the biggest clubs, who tend to be competing in Europe, are notoriously reluctant to sell their players mid-season, one player who could find himself on such a list is Southampton’s Morgan Schneiderlin, whose impressive midfield fire-fighting has now taken him well past the point of ‘flash in the pan’ and is edging ominously close to the point the St Mary’s faithful will be fearing: ‘obvious big club target’.

Schneiderlin would, on the face of it, present a blatant and capable cure to a number of Chelsea’s current ills. Firstly, he’d provide the club with a much-needed extra body in that area of the squad – no small thing for a club likely to be fighting on three fronts when January comes around.