New season New Chelsea

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It's been a while since I wrote about Football. I think over 5 months. Some of it has been due to the fact that all the major leagues were on break, and some because my team wasn't doing so great. From my cover photo I'm sure you already know I support Chelsea.

Last season was Abysmal for the club, we were horrible to watch and we lost so many times, nothing about us was impressive and most of it was due to poor management. We sacked Tuchel and brought in the clueless Potter who all but wrecked the club. Then when we thought it was over we brought in Lampard to completely sink the ship. We ended up finishing 12th last season. No Europe, nothing but a horrible mid table finish.

Now, a lot has happened since then. We had a change of management, we got Mauricio Pochettino, and a change of squad as well. A majority of our players were sold, the likes of Mason Mount, Christian Pulisic, Edouard Mendy, Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz, Kalidou Koulibaly, Loftus Cheek, Cesar Azpilicueta, Ngolo Kante, Mateo Kovacic, and many more. I don't think I've ever seen so many departures at the same time. Most of our starters from last season are no longer at the club. We've brought in a couple new recruits as well.

When I saw how things were shaping up I was skeptical (I'm still a bit) about how things would unfold this season especially since the squad is very young so there's not much experience. And then most of them haven't played together before. So It won't be easy adapting to each other's styles while also playing against very competitive Premier league sides. But then the team surprised me during pre-season. They played good football. The likes of Nicholas Jackson, Nkunku, Mudryk and a few others caught the eye. Goals were something we found hard to come by last season, but during the pre season we scored in every single game we played. Of course it's just pre-season, no need to get too excited over friendlies,but it gave us a glimpse of what to expect.

That aside, yesterday We faced off against Liverpool. Liverpool and Chelsea have had a recent rivalry in the transfer market with Chelsea hijacking two of their transfer targets.

In recent history both sides have been evenly matched in their last 6 meetings. But this time was different. Liverpool also had a slump last season, and aren't the world beaters they once were, but then they looked like the better team on paper against Chelsea. Even as a Chelsea fan I was a bit afraid we'd get beaten badly. Especially when they have Salah who always starts the Season with top form.

The game started and Liverpool applied lots of pressure early on and scored. Chelsea didn't look too bright from the start, but after the goal they started looking a bit better on the ball. That was until Salah put another one away. Luckily for us it was offside.

From then onwards it looks as though Chelsea players sat up. We began playing beautiful football (been so long since I've seen that from us) and unsurprisingly we got an equalizer, scruffy finish from Axel Disasi, but it was what we deserved. We even took the lead minutes later but it was then ruled off for offside. We cooked and cooked, but no end product till the end of the first half.

Majority of the second half was balanced to an extent, but Chelsea created a couple more chances, most notable one being in the die minutes when Jackson drove with the ball from our half to around the Liverpool box before passing to Mudryk who took it too wide, he almost found Maatsen in space but Maatsen was closed down quickly.

It ended in yet another draw (7th consecutive one) but there's a lot of positives to take from the game. We actually played good football. It's been so long since I've seen my club create good chances, and the fact it was against a good team like Liverpool made it a lot sweeter. Some players looked really good. The likes of Chilwell, Jackson, Reece James, Enzo, and so on. The whole team seems to know what they're doing (bar Sterling). Pochettino seems to know what he's doing,and his tactics are working. I'm actually looking really excited to see how we perform this season. And with the likes of Caicedo and probably Lavia joining our midfield, we could actually be a force. Of course it's still early days so I can't get carried away. All I can do is watch and hopefully it's a good season for us.

~THANKS FOR READING~

_{Cover image by Simon Reza from Unsplash}

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