A blog of two halves

Providing Chelsea can keep creating chances, the season is within their grasp

Well, now we’ll see what Tony Conte is really made of.

5 April 2017
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Chelsea’s formation lacked instinct or confidence during Victor Moses’s recent absence. PICTURE: ACTION IMAGES

Well, now we’ll see what Tony Conte is really made of.

Next up are three tricky little trips – to the strange micro-climate of Bournemouth, to Old Trafford and to Wembley, to face the team that is starting to turn up the heat – Tottenham.

Even title pretenders are entitled to stumble along the path, but Chelsea have to focus and steer the ship back in the right direction.

The Blues’ squad is surprisingly limited. Because Conte has only used 13 players in his starting line-ups in the Premier League for six whole months, he has painted himself into a bit of a corner.

The upside is that the players have gelled into an impressive unit, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and which position they’re likely to be occupying at any given moment.

The flipside is that when any injury arrives – such as Victor Moses’s recent absence – the reshuffled formation hasn’t the same instinct or confidence.

Spurs, whose next games are home fixtures against Watford and Bournemouth, are on a roll, and will keep tightening the screw if they can.

But at the back of their minds is the knowledge that as they ran towards the final hurdles last season, they tripped up.

Provided Chelsea can keep creating chances, as they have been doing, the title is still within their grasp.

A watertight Blues defence is as critical as a free-scoring attack. Fasten your seat belts; this could be a rocky ride.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

Tim Harrison

Tim is our Chelsea FC blogger.

Tim has been writing Chelsea match reports since the late 1980s for newspapers and, more recently, websites.

When he first reported on the Blues, the press box was a metal cage suspended over the lip of the old west stand - and you reached it via a precarious walkway over the heads of the fans.

But he has been a Chelsea fan since his father took an excited seven-year-old to watch Chelsea v Manchester United in the mid 1960s... and covered his ears every time the chanting got too ripe.

In July 2005 he wrote The Rough Guide to Chelsea, published by Penguin, which sold 15,000 copies.

His favourite player of all time is Charlie Cooke, the mazy winger who lit up Chelsea's left wing in the 60s and 70s.

When he isn't watching the Blues, Tim acts, paints, writes and researches local history.

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