The season so far

Because Samsung Bridge has launched 11 games into the season, I thought it would be good to go through the season so far.

Chelsea's start to the season hasn't been great, but, seeing as this is the biggest change the club has seen since Mourinho left in 2007, I think it's difficult for Chelsea fans to complain. Under Jose, Chelsea were a powerful team, we could play football at times, but we had an ability to play in long to Didier Drogba and bully our way past opponents and win games. Under AVB, Chelsea are a different team, there's a style and a guile to our play, the signing Juan Mata has typified the move to play more 'vertical' passes.

The season started with a 0-0 draw away at Stoke, a game on another day, Chelsea would have run out 3 or 4 nil winners, Chelsea dominated the game and were just unfortante not to come away winners. Chelsea play a possesion game under AVB, with the 'vertical and horiztional' passes that make up AVB's footballing physolopy. In Chelsea's first four games they finished with possession stats of  59, 60, 68 and 56 per cent respectively.

The first defeat came in the fifth game of the season, away to Old Trafford to an in form United team. Again it was a day, in which on another day Chelsea could have won. United stormed into a three goal lead which was always going to be difficult to recover from. Fernando Torres pulled one back straight after half time, but it was his open goal miss that would ultimately seal the game in Manchester United's favour. It's a bit harsh to say Chelsea played naively, but they left too many gaps for United to exploit, and perhaps a more experienced manager would have stopped, but it's never in AVB philosophy to let other teams dictate his play.

Chelsea bounced back in the league and recorded 4-1, 5-1 and 3-1 victories over Swansea, Bolton and Everton. But then came the first blip of the season, defeat with nine men away at QPR rocked the squad, the game saw the first clear signs of the tactical genius we have at the helm. With two less men than the opposition, AVB made sure that central defenders Terry and Luiz played a rotation to go forward to help the attack and midfield, it was another game like Stoke, Chelsea came away with disbelief that they hadn't got anything from the game.

The John Terry racism allegations that came out from that QPR game, obviously didn't help the squad as they lost their first home game of the season 3-5 to Arsenal. There was an openness to the game that Chelsea haven't seen since pre Abramovich. The score could have been in favour of either team, but some slack defending allowed Arsenal to grab all three points, something AVB should look to fix quickly.

With a team in 'crisis' according to the national press, we next headed to Blackburn and snatched a 1-0 win despite being under pressure for the last twenty minutes, it showed that the steel is still in the team and to be able to hold on to a clean sheet for the first time since the opening game of the season. All that has left the team in 4th place with 22 points, 9 points behind Manchester City, but still in touching distance.

Positives:
There is a real exciting change happening at Chelsea, we have a manager with a clear footballing philosopy, that makes sure his team plays with a style. Signing players like Mata, shows the club is moving in a new direction.

Negatives:
Defensively the team has been poor and have been found out by better teams like United and Arsenal, because of the sheer size of this transition it may be a couple of years before we win a trophy but we must stick as one under AVB and we will see success.