Excuses: Chelsea can’t blame fatigue or Club World Cup for bad results so far | OneFootball

We took Sunday off to just enjoy some other games and think about other things – but there’s no dodging it forever, we need to break down Saturdays’ defeat to Sunderland.

Chelsea lack two key ingredients brought by experience

Marc Cucurella in action against Sunderland. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)

The Evening Standard have an interesting piece today which takes a bigger picture look at Chelsea’s issues, and a lot of it we agree with.

“This is also a Chelsea team who, for all their youthful vigour, are struggling to contend with the impact of last season’s congested schedule. The after-effects of the Club World Cup are already taking hold. Levi Colwill’s serious knee injury on the eve of the season was the start rather than the end of Chelsea’s injury issues.”

That’s true, although at this stage it feels like fatigue is a bit of an excuse. Those players out on the pitch on Saturday had largely been rested in the midweek game. Many of them just had a fortnight of international break where they didn’t play.

“Control and consistency are the two things they continue to strive for under Maresca,” they conclude.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves – although we’ve said similar things many times in the last year. The two qualities are closely linked. A team needs experience in order to exert control or achieve consistency, and Chelsea just don’t have that experience.

In other news…

Joe Cole was speaking on TNT Sport this morning, where he said that the Blues need two years to be title challengers. That’s not something that will go down well with a lot of fans.

Cole had previously said he hoped that the Blues can go one better than last year by qualifying for the Champions League with a bit more of a cushion. Well, that’s not looking likely right now.