Chelsea look like contenders

Chelsea show ruthless efficiency against Southampton

The league’s top three teams all scored four goals away from home this week: Manchester City did it against West Brom, Arsenal did it against Sunderland and Liverpool did it against Crystal Palace. Those wins were varying degrees of eye-catching. The Reds’ stood out mostly of because of how ridiculous it was and the familiar, boring questions it raised about the fragility of their defense. City’s was notable mainly because they hadn’t won in a month. Arsenal beat Sunderland, so no bonus points there — although the return from injury of Olivier Giroud and Aaron Ramsew was very good news.

Then there was Chelsea, who have slipped out of the title conversation since back-to-back league losses to Liverpool and Arsenal, and who traveled away to play an actual, real life good team in Southampton, and put in as good of an away performance as you will ever see, winning 2-0.

The Blues were frighteningly efficient in this match. They let Southampton have the ball, shut them down almost completely (the Saints managed only one shot on target) and picked them off ruthlessly on the break.

Eden Hazard was outstanding. There’s something about the way he holds up the ball, lets defenders come to him, uses their size and weight and momentum against them, always one step ahead. His goal effectively decided the match within five minutes. Diego Costa, meanwhile, didn’t play particularly well, and then he scored a world class goal to end any real hope of a Saints’ comeback after only 55 minutes.

Southampton were game opposition, but after Dusan Tadic spent much of the first few minutes toying with Marco Alonso, they never looked truly threatening.

Chelsea are in the title race, no question. If they have a weakness it’s a lack of cover for the 3-4-3 formation that has rejuvenated them. Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso have excelled in the wing back positions so far, but they’ve rarely been tested without the ball, and the way Tadic toyed with Alonso in those opening minutes suggested there’s a vulnerability there.

The key, I think, will be getting a sort of mishmash of a back three on the move. Gary Cahill and David Luiz tend to look very good when they’re able to stay comfortably in central defensive areas, but both of them will make bizarre decisions if you move them around enough (John Terry, if and when he returns to the side, won’t make bizarre decisions, but his near-total lack of pace will cause similar problems). That will require opponents to break quickly into the space Alonso and Moses vacate when Chelsea push forward in attack.

Cesar Azpilicueta, who’s really a full back, doesn’t have that problem, but he’s undersized for a center-back, and if teams can effectively drag Cahill and Luiz to their left, Azpilicueta can be exploited at the back post. It was a little surprising the Saints didn’t try to isolate him and Charlie Austin more often. Partly that was because Alonso did a good job limiting Southampton’s crossing opportunities and partly it was because the quality of their delivery was poor.

Even so, this Chelsea team is very, very good. And the great advantage of having N’Golo Kante and Nemanja Matic in central midfield is that, while their attacking interplay leaves something to be desired, they’re perfectly suited to covering any gaps left by Moses and Alonso, thus allowing Cahill and Luiz to do as little running around as possible.

Southampton are not the most prolific side in the league, but Chelsea shut them down with unerring ease, just as they shut down Hull, Leicester and Manchester United before them. With back-to-back matches against Tottenham and Manchester City fast approaching, we’ll find out soon how durable the 3-4-3 really is.

Long live the 0-0 draw

There is something irresistible about a good 0-0 draw, and the 0-0 draw between Manchester United and Burnley at the weekend was as good as it gets. This had it all: heavily favored home side, unfancied away team, a world class goalkeeping performance, a player sent off, a manager sent to the stands, an increasingly disturbed Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 38 shots (38!) for the home side, 11 of them on target, and the underdog holding out, in spite of it all.

It’s truly a mystery how United didn’t win this match. Tom Heaton was, of course, the biggest reason for that. He made a series mind boggling saves, but even so, he shouldn’t have had a chance with several of United’s opportunities. But it wasn’t to be.

It’s easy to criticize United given the slump they’re in (drawn three, won one, lost one in their past five league games), but there was nothing wrong with the performance. If they played this game again 100 times they’d win, I don’t actually know, but a lot of them.

It was just, meaningless though this claim is about to be, one of those days. What other explanation is there? The expected goals were 2.9-0.3 in United’s favor (per @Caley_graphics). They had 37 shots, 11 of them on target, and this despite having a player and a manager sent off.

Jose Mourinho refused to talk to the media afterwards, loath as he presumably was to have to explain the inexplicable. He will face even more scrutiny after this result, which is strange given that his side did pretty much everything they needed to do to win except for win. And this only three weeks after a 1-1 draw against Stoke in which United were also totally dominant (that games was 2.7-1.1 in expected goals).

This sort of thinking will take you down the rabbit hole, but still, if those two points were the six United probably deserved, they’d be sixth place on 19 points, three points off the top four. Hardly a disaster.

But the table now makes for ugly viewing for Mourinho. In a six-horse race, United are eighth, behind both Everton and Watford, who weren’t even meant to be horses at all. Or weren’t meant to be racing, or something.

In what is a very tight race for the top four, United are slipping out of the picture. Mourinho has been criticized (for reasons I really don’t understand) over the past decade for only managing frontrunners, but he now has an opportunity to do something he hasn’t done since the very beginning of his managerial career: turn what looks to be a very mediocre team into a very good one.

He doesn’t seem all that enthusiastic about the challenge, but if he pulls off, it should go down as one of the biggest achievements of his career.

Weekly Awards

The Charlie Adam Award for Possibly Deliberate Passing: Joe Allen

Look at this pass:

It seems unlikely that was deliberate for the same reason it seems unlikely Joe Allen has now played the greatest pass of all time. But just imagine for a second that it was deliberate. On the half-volley, reversed, sort of no-look, through a veritable sea of defenders, it had it all. It’s not not deliberate; you can see Allen take a little peak at the situation around him as the ball drops, but it frankly seems too good to be true that he’d be able to pick out Wilfried Bony, even if he did see him. More likely he was just putting it in an “area,” and more likely than that he was shooting. But fortune favors the fortunate, as they probably don’t say, and that’s good enough for me.

The Tony Yeboah award for most ambitious 40-yard volley II: Christian Fuchs

Christian Fuchs has volleys on the brain. We know this because last week he scored a completely outrageous 25-yard volley from the top the box, and you don’t forget those things quickly, especially when you’re a left back. Against Tottenham, he thought he’d try his luck again, except this time he seemed to be feeling way more confident because he convinced Riyad Mahrez to play a corner straight to him, again at the top of the box, to try to recreate the trick. With Son Heung-min closing fast, Fuchs hit the living daylights out of the poor ball, which went about a yard over Hugo Lloris’ goal. Not bad at all.

The Mark Clattenburg Award for Not Being Able To Live With Them or Without Them: Liverpool defenders

Liverpool won 4-2 at Crystal Palace this weekend, the fourth time in 10 they’ve been involved in a match with more than five goals. Arsenal are the only other title contender with more than zero such games. They’ve played in three, but one was against Liverpool and another was against Sunderland, which probably shouldn’t count. This weekend the Reds made a special point of conceding stupid goals, which, perhaps inevitably, has led to some stupid reactions, not the least of which has been the widespread characterization of the Dejan Lovren mistake leading to Palace’s first goal as “inexplicable.” The explanation, for any of those still wondering, is quite simple: he tried to kick the ball forward and accidentally kicked it backward. Anyway, Lovren, ever the idiot-magnet, went up the other end and took advantage of some idiotic Palace marking to make it 2-1. Joel Matip added another to make the final score between Palace and the Reds’ back line 2-2. Can Liverpool win the league with this defense? They can if the defenders score a goal every time they gift one to the opposition.

The Tim Sherwood Award for Turning Out To Be As Bad As Everyone Expected: Hull

That didn’t last long. At the end of August, Hull were the toast of the league: heroic defenders extraordinaire, winners of two league games in a row. Jake Livermore, a midfielder, was playing center-back, Sam Clucas was the new N’Golo Kante, Mike Phelan was the second coming of Alex Ferguson. And all this despite the various facts that Steve Bruce quit a couple of months before the season due to the incompetence of his superiors (and that means a lot coming from a man who has since willingly accepted the Aston Villa job), the owners didn’t seem particularly interested in appointing a replacement, Phelan had only 13 fit senior players to choose from and all hell seemed generally to be breaking loose. Fast forward a few months and Hull are about as crap as all of that should have made them to begin with. They lost again at the weekend, this time to Watford, to make it six league defeats in a row. They’ve conceded more goals than any other team in the league and have scored fewer than all but Sunderland and Burnley. The only real question at this point is how they won those first two games.

The Can Harry Kane Be Fit Again? Award for This Is Like Watching Paint Dry: Tottenham

Tottenham are in good shape, all things considered. They’re the only undefeated team in the league, they’ve got the best defense in the league, they trail the top four by only two points and they’re only three points off the lead. But goodness gracious great balls of fire they are boring. Tottenham have conceded five goals and scored 14, which means their 10 games have featured 19 total goals. That’s the lowest number in the league, behind Middlesbrough (20), whose best attacker is Alvaro Negredo, and Burnley (21), whose best attacker is a goalkeeper. Obviously Harry Kane’s absence isn’t helping, but even so. Last season, Spurs scored 69 goals, the second most in the league. This season they’re on pace for 53. They might actually be a better team overall (jury’s still out on that one, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable), but the attack is floundering to a point that Kyle Walker has often looked like their most creative player, which is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever written. It’s like watching Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid play the away leg of a Champions League semifinal, except forever.