Chelsea a ticking time bomb
We have seen the devastating effects of Chelsea's split personalities in the last week
What a difference a week makes.
Last week, I was writing how Chelsea’s Achilles heal has reared it’s ugly head once again off the back of a thrashing from West Brom.
This week, we are celebrating the clubs biggest win under Thomas Tuchel so far, turning Crystal Palace over 4-1.
In the middle of that was a pretty meh performance against Porto, but with a fantastic result.
We have seen all sides of Chelsea this week, and a fine example of their split personalities.
Of course, we will never win every match we play, we also will not put in fine performance after fine performances - it is impossible. But how typically Chelsea is it to have such contrasting weekends, right?
Against West Brom, heads dropped and my concerns about our weak mentalities and lack of real leadership on the pitch came to the forefront once again. When things are not going our way, our heads drop.
But at the same time, since Tuchel took over, and even at times under Frank Lampard, Chelsea had a real feel of being a ticking time bomb waiting to explode - And I mean this positively.
We have been winning matches by the odd goal or two, and our performances mostly have been pretty good, but without being emphatic.
I said on our Podcast a few weeks back that what we really need is a big win, scoring 4 or 5 goals and thrashing a team, to really grow our confidence and our belief in our own ability. I really felt that this is what some of our players needed, especially the new arrivals.
And right on cue, up they stepped smashing four goals past Palace on Saturday night. OK so we conceded a goal which was annoying, but we thrashed an opponent, and completely bossed the entire game by doing so.
THIS was what we needed. Every single player played well and put in 100% effort. Even when Palace scored and we had a feeling of ‘here we go again,’ we stayed switched on and fought for that fourth goal to keep the pressure off and make it an easy win.
I think how emphatic we were, and how easily we bossed the game and looked like scoring so many, I believe this will have a great effect on all the players and give some of them the belief that they needed mentally to go on and have a successful end to the season.
Written By Simon Phillips (@siphillipssport)