He is highly undervalued. I think we will see that if a replacement takes a while to adjust in the early season. But he is ideally suited to a two man partnership up front, and the systems we generally play dont afford him that luxury. That is why he is maligned as wasteful, etc, and why he thrives when the wingers play in close or he has a partner: he can do his thing and leave the finishing to others
adj137 said:
I don't know what to make of Essien, he hasn't been that bad but didnt they shell out like 34mil for him.Even for chelsea standards thats alot of money.
If he is dropped isn't that quite a failure? I think he deserves a bit more time than just one season.
Essien is not a failure. Yes he was very pricey, but he is also very good, and indeed very raw. We are targeting Europe next season, and while Essien will be an important player for many years, assuming nothing goes wrong, its obvious that Ballack is an upgrade over him right now
If it were up to me, though, we'd play with 4 across the middle and he would still start, probably on the right
Bobby said:
Not really, he's quite short and isn't the strongest. He's skillful, fast, great control all that.
But he's not winning 50-50s against Premiership defenders. I assume they'll use Crespo for that.
Crespo will be gone, and ive always envisaged Tevez as a Rooney type, not just because of the squat or ugliness. He can hold the ball up from what I have seen, but if we got him, Im almost sure it would mean the end of a 4-3-3 system being the standard. With Drogba, im pretty sure he would kill
henry#14 said:
Meh, a club like Chelsea(even though I don't like them) should be able to field someone with a lot more talent and far less attitude(yes, I know ZLatan's a cock as well, but we're talking about Drogba here).
completely different attitudes. Zlatan is eccentric from what I gather. Drogba is focused, and he is a complete team player to the last. In that sense, he is mentally a prototypical Mourinho type. What fails him is the inability to stop coddling for fouls and being theatrical. Without that, he would have a nearly flawless attitude.
That is the only reason people hate him. That and he gets the job done