The Season Ahead

With the swansong of our most successful manager ever, confirmed, the loss of one of the greatest and the emission of one Italian the 2013/2014 Barclays Premier League is going to be one of the most anticipated seasons for a very long time.
But what will 2013/14 mean to us? Obviously, for the last ten years it has been expected of us to win something big and silver, and in the eleventh year of Roman’s reign the expectations have never been higher for the trophy cabinet to have one, or two, or even them all come the final whistle next year.
Now Jose is ready to “marry again”, Chelsea Football Club can arguably only move forwards, but Jose is only half of the success that we anticipate, the team must perform, too. A team, who one week let you sleep easy at night and the next makes the majority of your workmates remember you’re a Chelsea fan for all of the wrong reasons. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance Jose will bring stability and a dose of consistency back to the Bridge where in his previous Premier League stint took us through a sixty game unbeaten record on Fulham Road. The stability we’ve desired so desperately might just be back.
It is imperative – as always – that a prompt start to the season is made, much like our previous campaign, but not slip from such a commanding position. As the calender year closes, the cliche ‘title race’ will be thrown around in the media like a baby’s bottle, but it is important that we are a part of it and it must be certain that we are playing Champions League football in the new year. If these two are achieved I think the second half of the season will be potentially prosperous.
In January, our league position – not money – must dictate our transfer activity. If our league position is resoundingly strong, transfers would be unnecessary, unless the squad needs deepening for the addition of FA Cup games to an already congested fixture list.
With all of this said, the first eight weeks of 2014 – and the start of any year – are the most labourious of the season for any team but when you’re a team that plays nearly seventy games every term, finding a balance between the competitions we’re a part of – hopefully all of them – needs to be as close to perfection as possible. A balance will give us our best opportunity to compete and with KVB and Romelu Lukaku being announced as part of Jose’s plans and the imminent transfer of two or three new transfers, the squad will deepen and maintain a high quality for a rotation system.
The following two months are crucial to Chelsea’s season; the Premier League reaches it’s last ten games the real candidates to lift the crown prove their worth, the quarters and semis of the FA Cup and the last 16, quarters and semis of the biggest club competition in the world. Our season could fall apart or – if all goes well – be one of the best in a while.
And finally the month of champions is upon us. The chance to be a part of history, a treble could be won, which is more of a possibility than last season. The title could’ve been won earlier but could go down to it’s final month and I feel that we’re stronger candidates than we have ever been since our last triumph three years ago. We’re naturalists when it comes to the FA Cup – winning four of the last seven at the not-so-new Wembley, so we are in a strong position to make it five in eight. As for the Champions League: there has been a shift in power in European football, from England to Spain and now it has paid a visit to Germany – just look at Dortmund v Madrid and Bayern v Barcelona. But as proven, we made the impossible, possible in 2012 on the 19th of May. And with such a masterful tactician at the helm I think we are in for a very good run the next time round.
All-in-all I think we are in for a season that holds much promise and if a handful of the transfers, which are being rumoured, materialise then I don’t see why we can’t recreate what happened in that season nine years ago. Moreover, he has more knowledge of the league than he did nine years ago and a profound and unique relationship with our club. The reasons to win something this year are there it is just whether they can be put in to practice.