The soon to be former Premier League champions have suffered another disappointing season from their perspective again after lifting the Premier League cup the previous season. Luckily for them, they are still in contention to win a trophy this season and sit outside the top 4. Their performances have not been as consistent as last season under Antonio Conte. He has been under scrutiny since the Diego Costa debacle. This could be a factor to Chelsea’s poor performances as the players look like they do not want to play under Antonio Conte. This has been proven in the past under previous managers at Chelsea.
Is this the best time to play Chelsea?
With Chelsea 8 points behind Tottenham, surely, they would want their season to be a failure without champions league football next season and a strong possibility to achieve their top managerial targets; should Antonio Conte get sacked. After last weekend’s humiliating defeat to Tottenham last weekend, could Chelsea choose that fixture to change their season around? There will be a lot of pressure and spotlight on Chelsea for this game and should they drop points, this would be a fantastic opportunity for West Ham to save their season.
This could be the best time to snatch points off Chelsea given their poor run of form this academic year. Having been knocked out the champions league by Barcelona and losing ground on top 4, West Ham can inflict pain by making them drop more points. Marko Arnautovic can continue his goal scoring spree this weekend.
Can this help us?
This would be a good opportunity for West Ham to complete the double over Chelsea as they have only won 2 out of the last 6 premier league games. This is a bad run of form for Chelsea and we can take advantage of this especially with our strong performance last weekend against Southampton. If we score first, Chelsea will look vulnerable and we can take advantage. This was a similar situation last weekend when Tottenham equalised, and Chelsea crumbled by conceding another 2 more goals. After beating Chelsea last December, we controlled the game and restricted Chelsea to a limited amount of opportunities. It would be an extremely difficult task to do at Stamford Bridge and the type of quality Chelsea have in the starting 11 and bench. Unfortunately for us, Thibaut Courtios and Pedro could feature for the game against us this Sunday. With Winston Reid still injured and a strong possibility of Manuel Lanzini missing the game, we must restrict Chelsea as much as we can without our star players being present.
A mistake David Moyes made recently was against our 4-1 loss against Liverpool at Anfield in February. Tactically he got it wrong and put his substitutions in at the wrong time. Hopefully, David Moyes has learnt from this lesson and despite Antonio being injured for the rest of the season. This would be an issue as he could assist Arnautovic and cause problems for Chelsea on the counter attack.
Written By Abu | (@Asheth16)