the curve of money v performance shape suggests to me that we should never be getting relegated because at the very least we will always be richer than the clubs coming up from the championship every season.
In a three-man midfield they could (not should, after all we have Bentancur, Bissouma and Sarr all looking for starting places too), but in a midfield two? It's like when we had Dier & Wanyama playing alongside each other when Dembele was crocked
Hojbjerg isn't good enough to start full stop, while Skipp has sadly stagnated badly under a succession of poor managers.
Being richer isn't enough to guarantee finishing higher in a single season though. Chelsea have the second most expensive squad and are nine places below that. Because the standard gets more even as you go down in squad value, the sixth most expensive squad might finish twelve places lower. We've actually got a lower scatter on our league positions than other teams around us but I don't see any good reason for that.
I don’t think it was, though. We were mainly trying to get Lenglet into space in the middle third to spring an offside trap. We weren’t going long and trying to bypass the midfield with balls over the top nearly as frequently. We didn’t manage to spring the trap and Villa worked us out.
A stronger measure IMHO would be the ratio of wage bill / revenue. I suspect that for most of the relegated clubs tis closer to 1 than 0.5 (Spurs are one of the few of the usual suspects who are close to the latter) .
Nor Skipp + Sarr (the CL away tie against AC Milan) . The failure to have a reasonable replacement for Bentancur is purely on Conte (either to have signed a player or to have fast-tracked an academy prospect into the senior squad) .
I've said it before, but I still believe that the issue with our midfield isn't down to quality. We've got five good midfielders, but they're all box-to-box players or something similar to that. There's no holding players, playmakers or attacking midfielders. That leads to pressure on our defence and a lack of creativity, as well as poor balance. We've also had a bit of bad luck with injuries and we've been constantly outnumbered. Bentancur getting crocked is just one of those things, but Bissouma being out at the same time? I think a lot of teams would struggle under those circumstances. Running Hojbjerg and Skipp into the ground probably wasn't the answer, though.
Realistically we had a form of cover for Bentancur in Bissouma...but he was injured too The issue was Conte split his midfielders into two camps: progressive or recycling, without a hybrid of the two in case of inevitability I know it's easy to dunk on Conte (and fun!), but if we had a CM who could operate in either role the toxic shock syndrome of losing both progressive CMs in the space of a few weeks could have been softened by a reasonable degree
As Croydon suggests, his appearance against Newcastle won't have helped. Should've been more involved before that though and the system ****ed it that day, not him. Asking an inexperienced player who hasn't played much to take up a new role in a new system? Not Stellini's finest hour, to say the least.
Yes was about to say it is illogical blaming him for the Newcastle debacle, not least because had he been more involved in the months prior he would've been more up to speed and able to compensate more for the insanity unfolding all around him. This season from start to finish has been a Study in Squad Mismanagement. Sports science students will reference it in decades to come.
