Monday 29 December 2014 14:19, UK
Adam Bate looks at how Chelsea showed in their 2-0 win at Stoke City on Monday Night Football that they have the toughness as well as the quality needed to win the Premier League title this season...
"If you want a fight, they'll give you a fight."
Gary Neville's pre-match assessment of what it takes to be a title-winning side certainly resonated in Chelsea's performance at Stoke on Monday Night Football. "You're not going to do it just through technique," he reiterated afterwards. "You've got to fight and battle."
In a feisty game at the Britannia Stadium, Chelsea did precisely that as they ground out a 2-0 win to ensure they will top the table at Christmas and show why they remain favourites to claim the Premier League title this season.
Despite Manchester City's recent resurgence, Jose Mourinho continues to possess the country's most complete team. This result, at a ground where they had been beaten last term, emphasised the progress. "In the last couple of years, it has proved very difficult for us," John Terry told Sky Sports after the game. But Terry hasn't had Nemanja Matic in front of him in this fixture before.
"He wins every header, he makes every tackle and he breaks the play up when they counter," added the Blues captain. The protection that the towering midfielder provides this Chelsea side is well-documented and was evident once again. Athletic off the ball and composed on it, he was a deserved man of the match.
"Before the game, we said we couldn't fight with them, we had to play our game," Matic told Sky Sports upon receiving that award. And yet, it was a slightly misleading representation of what had occurred. Mourinho's team selection had shown that he is a manager who doesn't merely ask his team to play their own game with no thought for the opposition.
In sharp contrast to the manager-philosophers espousing their ideas at Anfield on Sunday, the Chelsea boss reacts to the demands of the situation. "We saw Arsenal get bullied by Stoke but Mourinho will come here and say 'this is how we have to set up because there is a way you have to play away at Stoke'," said Jamie Carragher in the Sky Sports studio.
In this instance, that meant selecting the 6'2'' John Obi Mikel to partner Matic in midfield. There was little chance of this Chelsea team being bullied. Indeed, they made more tackles and won more aerial duels in the first half than Arsenal managed in the full 90 minutes in the previous fixture at the Britannia.
Chelsea's midfield pairing played a significant part in that. It's among the oldest truisms in the game that if the superior team work as hard as their inferior opponents, then the class should tell in the end. Why risk playing a different type of game when you can play the opponents' game better than them? So it proved. "They matched Stoke in every way," said Gary Neville.
In fact, they did rather more than match their hosts. Mikel and Matic outfought Geoff Cameron and Steven N'Zonzi. Between them, they made 16 tackles, 10 clearances, five interceptions and three blocks. In comparison, the Cameron-N'Zonzi axis made only three tackles and failed to come up with a single clearance, interception or block.
The majority of Stoke's 13 shots were blocked, offering a reminder that while Chelsea are the Premier League's top scorers so far this season, they might also be the most difficult team to play against. As Neville had pointed out before kick-off, the mentality to do what is necessary in the circumstances to optimise the chances of victory is a hallmark of successful teams.
"It's the adaptation of your morals of what you’d like football to be to say, 'I'm going to leave Oscar on the bench and I’m going to play Mikel', who's obviously more of a destructive player and more of a presence. That's what teams who go and win the league do. They adapt to the approach of the other teams. Jose Mourinho does that and he has no problem playing what you'd call an ugly game and winning ugly."
The latest example came in the second minute. Terry shrugged off the attentions of Cameron to nod home from Cesc Fabregas's corner and score for the fifteenth consecutive Premier League season. It wasn't a free-flowing goal but when Branislav Ivanovic is the seventh tallest player in your team, it's a viable tactic. The bully, bullied.
It should have been 2-0 soon after when Matic's tackle on Cameron led to Fabregas picking up the ball and cutting open the Stoke defence to put Diego Costa through on goal. Here was a moment that summed up everything that has changed about Chelsea - Matic's presence in midfield, Fabregas's creativity and Costa's finishing.
As it happened, Costa's effort was wayward and so we had to wait until after the break to get a goal that defined this Chelsea team in a different sense. This time Mark Hughes was raging as the visitors slowed the game to a stand-still in order to relieve the pressure before injecting the urgency when it mattered.
Eden Hazard loitered over the ball as Fabregas spotted the run of Costa, moving into the space the striker had vacated and latching onto his Belgian team-mate's forceful pass before scuffing home to double the lead.
"In that goal, you've got gamesmanship, you've got possession and then you've got quality," said Neville. "It sums up in a minute everything that a championship-winning side looks like." Mentally tough, physically strong and technically superb. There will be more entertaining moments in Chelsea's season but this game at Stoke might just be the one that shows why it is a campaign likely to end in silverware.
Watch Chelsea v West Ham on Boxing Day from 12.30pm on Sky Sports 1 HD
