Team Focus: Sunderland Win Suggests Chelsea Ready to Flourish Again

Statisticians will point out that the idea of a new manager bounce is nonsense, that the idea that a change of manager prompts an upturn in form is not borne out by facts. But what is true that there are occasions when a manager’s presence has become so oppressive that players appear liberated once he has gone. Certainly that was the case with Chelsea on Saturday - aided, admittedly, by the fact they were playing a Sunderland side whose performance in the first half hour was abject. 

So obvious was the improvement that it angered a crowd still in love with Jose Mourinho - and perhaps they had a point in suspecting a lack of application from certain players over the past few weeks. But there was also a tactical issue: Oscar played with a vim he’s hardly ever shown at Chelsea, as though he at last felt free to express himself without fear of being berated for losing the ball. 

There were stepovers, backheels and flicks, even a rabona: this was a player intent on enjoying himself, like a teenager throwing a party as soon as his parents had gone away for the weekend. Oscar has always had that in him, and yet seems to have spent much of his career suppressing it. 

At the Under-20 World Cup in 2011, for instance, when he was scandalously overlooked for player of the tournament in favour of the centre-forward Henrique, who scored five goals, he has dragged back to play on the left side of a midfield diamond, vacating the number 10 position for Philippe Coutinho. In that sense, he was the ideal creator for Mourinho, a player who could suppress his attacking instincts and perform his defensive function diligently. Saturday’s performance, though, suggested Oscar has chafed at the restrictions placed upon him. 

It also suggested that Oscar might thrive in a less structured role - certainly against lesser opposition. He dominated the game, having 106 touches, 12 more than anybody else. He completed six dribbles - three more than any other player - had five shots and played one key pass. The flip side of that is that only two of the shots were on target and he was dispossessed five times, but that’s the nature of attempts to unlock an opponent; they necessarily entail an element of risk. Deciding how much risk to take is a key part of a manager’s strategic approach. 

What is striking is how different this Oscar was to the Oscar of the rest of the season. Overall in the Premier League this season, he has averaged 1.9 shots and 0.9 dribbles per game. Even allowing for the fact this was against a Sunderland side that, for the first half hour at least, could hardly have been more acquiescent, that’s a remarkable shift of tone. And he still made four tackles in the game, suggesting that it’s not for him a question of either attacking or defending. 

But Oscar is only part of it. Eden Hazard was fairly clearly disaffected with Mourinho by the end, batting away an attempted hug as he came off towards the end of the Champions League win over Porto, and then being involved in that strange touchline spat at Leicester as Mourinho seemingly tried to encourage him to run off a hip injury. Hazard has been a shadow this season of the player he was last, with his shots per game dropping from 2.1 to 1.4 and dribbles from 4.8 to 3.0. If he too is liberated when he returns form injury, then Chelsea may once again by formidable. 

The question then is who takes the blame. Is it Mourinho’s fault that players became inhibited, or the players’ for having allowed their standards to slip? In a purely utilitarian sense, perhaps it doesn’t matter: the easiest solution was the removal of the manager. He has gone and the signs are that Chelsea are ready to flourish again.

What does the win and performance over Sunderland mean for Chelsea? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below