?Chelsea fans have come to expect a lot from their club in recent times, and understandably so.
Since the early 2000s, the Blues have taken up a new profile as one of Europe’s best, winning multiple Premier League titles, as well as the Champions League.
The Londoners have also had some of the world’s top talent feature in their royal blue, and have also hired some of the very best as it relates to management.
Chelsea supporters have come to expect a certain standard at the club, and they are well within their rights to. They do support one of the biggest clubs in the world now, so they could be forgiven for being disappointed with recent results.
Said fans have watched the club struggle since beating Stoke City 5-0 at the end of December, failing to claim another victory since then. And to make matters worse, they haven’t scored a single goal in the last three outings.
The Blues haven’t yet won a match this year, despite already playing four times. They haven’t recorded a loss either, to their credit, but there isn’t much to be proud of when you’ve drawn four successive games.
Disappointment is pretty reasonable at this point, but it really shouldn’t go past that. The moans and groans from the Stamford Bridge crowd during the draw against Leicester on Saturday were in very poor taste, and it probably had an effect on the team’s output.
Antonio Conte has also been on the end of a lot of criticism from Blues fans this season, as has the Chelsea board.
The Italian, however, just isn’t deserving of most of the stick he gets. He’s only just recently took a club that finished 10th in the league and turned them into Champions, but that has had little bearing on some of the opinions going around lately.
The Premier League, as we all know, is notoriously hard to defend. No team has been able to retain a title since 2009, and the odds were always going to be stacked against the Blues after last year’s feat.
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At least they’re still competing for a top four spot and not languishing in the second half of the table like they did after winning their third title under Jose Mourinho, right?
The board, on the other hand, are due some criticism for not furnishing Conte with most of the players he wants. But even that has been a bit much.
First off, fans have no idea what goes on behind the scenes at the club. And there’s also the fact that the Blues are seeking to build a new state of the art stadium and aren’t keen to splash ridiculous amounts on players as they’re also trying to become less dependent on Roman Abramovich’s chequebook.
Conte overachieved by winning the league with the likes of Moses, Alonso, Cahill and Luiz as regular starters. Don’t you ever try and discredit the work he’s done at Chelsea. If there’s anything wrong with this club it’s the board, not Antonio.
— Conteholic (@Conteholic) January 15, 2018
All in all, though, things really aren’t that bad at Chelsea. The Blues won the league last season, and they’re probably going to win it again in the next few years. They’re back competing in the Champions League, currently in the League Cup semis, and will hopefully still be in the FA Cup after Wednesday.
To really put things into perspective, by the end of this season, Chelsea will have won two league titles and a League Cup in the last four years. They will also still be the most successful top flight side in the said period.
If that isn’t good enough for fans who support a top tier side that doesn’t compete in Spain, Germany or France, then they’re set to have a really hard time pleasing their supporters in future.
This by no means suggests that fans should accept mediocrity from the Blues; they really have been underwhelming as of late. Yet they can’t be expected to perform at top level all the time and the players would certainly be much better off if they feel like they’re being backed.
Let’