Sport
Enough excuses, Chelsea must manage squad better
When Thomas Tuchel said his Chelsea players were tired after they slipped out of the title race with a draw at Brighton last week, he was accused of making excuses. Although the statistics do suggest he had a point, Chelsea had played 15 games between the beginning of December and Tuesday night compared to Brighton’s nine, it seems unlikely he’d have made it had the Seagulls not equalised.
Fast-forward to Sunday, when the Blues continued their London derby dominance over Tottenham at Stamford Bridge, swatting aside Antonio Conte’s side for the third time in as many weeks. It has been high time for Premier League managers to load up on their reasons for defeats, poor results and shoddy performances. the winter months, especially the festive fixture pile-up, make life increasingly easy in that respect. Throw in the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been a blot on football just as it has every day life for coming up to two years now, and it has become possible for excuses to get games postponed.
The vocalisation of opposition to the league’s stance on the virus’ impact has not been subtle. At first, given the close proximity to the United Kingdom’s Omicron surge, it felt as though everybody was acting in good faith and that Covid was making it tough for teams to be fielded and matches to be played.
Especially with the reported emergence of vaccination figures among players, said to be lagging considerably behind other leagues in Europe, whose games were avoiding postponement more regularly. But then things became a little too convenient and a little too regular. Once the Africa Cup of Nations came around, injuries and then Covid pushed the threshold and there was a threat everything could descend into farce.
But this past weekend was the first in what felt like an age that a game was not stricken from the fixture list. Perhaps everything is calming down, or maybe teams have been told to be more robust despite there being no official movement on the rules from the league. Finally, though, it feels like any chance for excuses is over.
While injuries are not good enough reasons to disrupt the schedule in their own right, they are natural factors in why a team may not perform. It doesn’t have to evoke sympathy, but neither can it be dismissed as irrelevant. For example, Liverpool’s title charge was naturally impacted by Virgil van Dijk’s injury last season and Manchester City’s by Aymeric Laporte’s the year before.
No matter how much planning goes into a team, injuries cannot always be accounted for, every club has 25 players to pick from in a league season. But in Chelsea’s case, it was hard to justify because of the timing and the fact they are a huge club, the European champions, with one of the most expensively assembled squads around. If tiredness is a problem, perhaps Tuchel should have rotated better.
There were no cobwebs against Spurs, just another dynamic, energetic performance, the type that have become a regular occurrence in the year since Tuchel took over. With a break, for extra internationals and the FA Cup fourth round, he and other managers have the perfect chance to breathe some fresh air into their squads.
They have to figure out a way of avoiding poor performances; if a team is tired, particularly one as deep in quality as Chelsea, only one man should take the blame. The important games are going to come thicker and faster as Spring arrives, there will be no time to make excuses and fans shouldn’t accept them.
It isn’t just Tuchel, his comment and action was just the latest in a long line. The wider issue is that Covid hasn’t just opened up a chance to play the system to one’s advantage — something every team seems to both be accusing others of and denying within themselves — but also an entirely new excuse culture. Playing football during a pandemic has been difficult and that should always be remembered, as should it’s impact on staff and families, but it should make teams want to push through where possible and to accept that their jobs have got tougher, so they need to rise to the challenge.
There is a bonus week just around the corner, where everybody can take stock. If the postponements are clearing up, then the backlog of fixtures needs to be added to an already hectic schedule. Teams welcomed this in December, now everybody, Chelsea included, must power through until May. Next season will only be worse, anyway.
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