Is our season over, or do we still have a chance of success?

Our Sporting Directors failure to sign a proper 9 puts our season at risk.

The injuries to our two strikers, Marc Guiu and most significantly Nicolas Jackson, are hammer blows for Chelsea’s season.

I’m not going to waste my time and energy on our completely useless Sporting Directors and one particular co-owner, who all directly enabled this to happen by spending £1.4b in 5 windows without signing a top class pure 9. They frankly aren’t worth my time or energy. They’re not good enough, they’ve failed, and need to leave for the good of Chelsea FC, its that simple.

Instead, I want to focus on how we deal with this, and how it can impact our chances of securing Champions League Football, most likely 5th place in our case.

Nicolas Jackson is reported to be out until the beginning of April, which is 5 PL games, 6 at most. So in fact, he will miss less than half of our games. He’ll be available for the run-in when we play Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester United. He’s not been in the best form anyway, and probably needed a break. We shouldn't need him in the first knockout stage of the Conference League and he’ll be back for the latter stages, so it shouldn’t damage our chances there.

If we had a top class 9 to give him competition of course, he might not have got injured in the first place through being overplayed, and we wouldn’t be worried at all. But the self-anointed geniuses in charge, seem to think not signing a pure 9 in 5 windows where you spent a billion and two managers asked for one, is world class, top level performance which deserves praise. Apparently.

The games we’ll miss Jackson most will be Brighton, Aston Villa and Arsenal away. Other games such as Leicester, Southampton at home, we should, respectfully, be able to win comfortably. If we can’t win those without Jackson, we deserve nothing this season.

My solution is very simple. In the PL, we should play Cole Palmer as a false 9, with Christopher Nkunku as a 10, with Noni Madueke on the right and Pedro Neto on the left.

We’ve already seen Christopher Nkunku can’t play that 9 role and is more effective in the 8/10 role, where he can create and score from deeper, and he and Palmer can interchange to give defences problems. Cole can drop deep whilst Nkunku runs in behind and vice versa, so we don’t lose any creativity.

Cole Palmer is a tall player so might be able to get on the end of crosses and we all know he can finish, so I think he’d be pretty effective.

In the Conference League, I’d play Nkunku as the 9, Sancho on the right, Tyrique George on the left and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall or Enzo Fernandez in the 10 role until the quarter-finals or semi finals. Marc Guiu could be back in March, so he could start then, and Nkunku in the 10.

This means Nkunku playing twice a week for about 6 weeks, but if you take him off early in games it should be fine, given he’s barely played this season. Playing regularly might actually help his sharpness.

Christopher Nkunku is a good finisher, he’s scored goals throughout his career. We need him to do so now.

In midfield I’d play Rak-Sakyi with Dewsbury-Hall, until the quarter or semi finals. This is in large part to give Palmer, Caicedo and Enzo a rest. I’d even consider playing Reece or Trev in midfield to ensure our top two midfielders get some sort of rest.

The other thing we need to do is get the intensity back in our play. We’ve slowed right down in recent weeks.

Head coach Enzo Maresca needs to get the intensity levels back to closer to where we were in the Autumn, and play the more transitional style we were playing back then, and have a little flexibility tactically.

He can still play his “idea” of football but change things tactically, he needs to have the courage to do that. Finally, he needs to trust his squad and not be afraid to use them, because we need them now. Bottom line, Maresca needs to step up and make some big decisions and get them right.

Another source of hope is that this team started to come good around February/March last year after a tough winter, so hopefully we can do so again. I would also argue the fact expectations are now much less, might help them psychologically.

Without the pressure they have had and expectations on them, maybe the players can express themselves and enjoy their football, and that might actually get them back in form.

So what about the data? Well, our win % in the PL is currently 50 per cent this season, so with 14 games left, that would mean 7 wins, given our draw and loss rate, I’d estimate 4 draws and 3 defeats. That would leave us on 68 points. This was enough for 4th place last season, and could be enough for 5th this season, which is likely to be a Champions League place. Maresca’s Leicester actually won 7 of their last 14 league games last season too.

We essentially need Christopher Nkunku to replace Nicolas Jackson’s goals for the next 5 or 6 PL games which given Jackson’s scoring rate early this season, means about 4 or 5 goals and 2 or 3 assists. We also need Cole Palmer to keep scoring, and players like Noni, Pedro Neto, Jadon Sancho and Enzo Fernandez to step up with a few goals, as they really should be.

Maresca needs to use this to galvanise the squad, with the typical “the whole world is against us and written us off, lets stick together and prove them wrong”. Chelsea always seem to do better when everything is going against us, and we need that to happen now.

The season isn’t over, but the players and Enzo Maresca need to get their shit together, get their focus, form and confidence back and finish the season strongly. If we do, we can get Champions League and win the Conference League.

If not, and the current form continues, it will be Europa League or Conference League for us next season.

Even if we win the Conference League, not getting CL football will be a failure. And responsibility for that begins right at the top.

Not with the manager, but with those above whose ineptitude and failure to back him in the last two windows now puts our season at risk. Paul Winstanley, Laurence Stewart, Ben Roberts (his sticking with Robert Sanchez for so long has cost us at least 5-7 points) and Behdad Eghbali.

They are responsible for this mess, they will be responsible for any failure this season, regardless of any bullshit they brief to us. I highly advise not falling for any anti-Maresca briefs it things get worse, all that is deflection, to justify making him the scapegoat, which they absolutely will if it goes badly.

If we succeed this season it will be despite them and their abysmal squad building, not because of them. If we succeed, Maresca and the players will deserve the credit, given all they’ve had working against them.

I guess we’ll see what happens, but hope is not completely lost.

The Score