Is Chelsea's Hazard now in the finest form of his career?
Perhaps all players suffer the sort of expansionism that underpins modern capitalism. There must always be growth. Things must always be getting better, growing, improving. Nothing can ever simply remain the same. That Eden Hazard is paying well again this season after a largely miserable 2015/16 season is obvious, but what is a little surprising is that he feels he is playing better than he did in the 2014/15 campaign when Chelsea won the league and he was named player of the year.
"I try to be this kind of player: the type who does something whenever he gets the ball. Sometimes in the past I've gone through games where I've not touched the ball for 20 or 30 minutes. These days I'm always trying to have lots of touches, to be involved and to play my football for 90 minutes.
“The manager asks a lot of me. A lot. When we don't have the ball, he wants me to defend, to close inside and be ready to chase the diagonal [pass], and when we do have it I have to counter-attack and be free, always trying to do some 'magic' like I did here.”
Was that a dig at Jose Mourinho? Perhaps: it’s hardly news that he didn’t much like the Manchester United manager towards the end of his time at Chelsea. It’s a slightly strange one, though, if it is. After all, it’s hardly likely that Mourinho wasn’t demanding, that he didn’t ask Hazard to fulfill his share of defensive work. There was even, at the time, a theory that Mourinho was benefitting from the work Rafa Benitez had done with Hazard to make his game more complete.
In fairness to Hazard, the words that followed suggested that if there was a jibe at Mourinho it was subconscious. "With experience, you improve. I'm a better player now, more complete than I was when I was player of the year. I think we are in better form, as a team," Hazard added. "Not just me. Two years ago I was on fire, you know. But maybe I can score more goals this season. I already have 10. Two years ago I finished with 14 [in the Premier League]. We have a lot of games to play still, so we will see."
Two seasons ago, he also registered nine assists; this season he’s on three, so there’s a way to go on that front, but his role is different this time. Whereas he was very much a winger, albeit in the modern mould of cutting infield, he has moved to a slightly more central position, almost as an old-fashioned inside-forward. This season, in the 3-4-2-1, he has Marcos Alonso going outside him, so the creative burden from the left is shared.
Shots per game are at around the same level as two years ago – and at almost double the rate of his 2015/16 season return (1.2), while he’s actually tackling less than he did under Mourinho: 0.4 per game this season as opposed to 0.7 per game in each of the previous two seasons. He’s not making that up in interceptions: 0.7 this season as opposed to 0.6 two years ago.
None of which really matters, of course. Hazard’s contribution this season has been exceptional. He’s clearly playing well and is obviously one of the major reasons for the extraordinary run of form that has taken Chelsea nine points clear at the top of the table. But the suggestion that he is doing more defensive work than he was two years ago, that Antonio Conte has somehow coaxed him into doing something at which he was previously deficient, simply isn’t true. Maybe Hazard has forgotten how hard he used to work when he and Mourinho got on.
