Chelsea in crisis? Maybe

OCT 31 — It's been a notably lousy week for Chelsea, and in particular their totemic captain John Terry.

A couple of weeks ago I was able to write that Chelsea's new manager, Andre Villas-Boas, had enjoyed a smooth and comfortable start to his managerial career in West London. Not anymore. All of a sudden, his club has been plunged into a state of affairs approaching a full-blown crisis.

Of course, such an assertion makes me guilty of falling into the media's tiresome trap of sensationalist short-termism — how can I justify moving them from steady progress into a full-blown crisis in a fortnight? — but that's the way modern football works. If enough people start saying you're in crisis, you start to believe it, even if you didn't in the first place.

Like many things in sport, a "crisis" can quickly become self-perpetuating: if everyone says you've got problems playing away from home, for example, you start to believe you've got problems playing away from home and, before you know it, your problems playing away from home become far more serious than they ever were in the first place.

My sharpest personal experience of this principle of self-perpetuation came in the 2007/8 season, when Reading were relegated out of the Premier League after suffering a severe dose of "second-season syndrome" — a phenomenon we weren't even aware of until everybody else started talking about it.

Anyway, here's the evidence for Chelsea's crisis: in the last seven days, they have lost two London derbies, shipped five goals at home for the first time in the Premier League, had three players sent off, lost a vote against a supporters' group over the ownership of Stamford Bridge, and seen their captain accused of racism.

These events raise a whole host of questions, on and off the pitch. Firstly, Chelsea's new-found expansiveness under Villas-Boas, who has always promised to bring a more attack-minded approach to his new club, appears to be in need of rebalancing. They have now failed to keep a clean sheet in the last eight Premier League games, dating back to a goalless draw at Stoke on the opening day of the season, and have conceded more goals than anyone else in the top six.

Are their previously robust defensive foundations crumbling? In a word, no; I don't yet believe that Chelsea have a big defensive problem. Saturday's capitulation against Arsenal was a freak occurrence which largely came about as a result of an over-enthusiastic pursuit of a winner and a fabulous performance from Robin van Persie.

However, note the caveat: "yet." At the moment, conceding five goals at home could prove to be nothing more than a one-off, a learning exercise that might be easily rectified by a minor tactical realignment towards defensive responsibilities. But if they continue to ship goals, it could become the catalyst for a long-term defensive decline that requires major surgery.

Age might be starting to catch up with Terry, Ashley Cole and Petr Cech, and restoring defensive solidity without compromising his attacking principles will be a testing challenge for Villas-Boas. They badly need a clean sheet or two in the next few games; if they don't get one, questions will continue to be asked and Villas-Boas may be forced into more severe changes of personnel than he ever anticipated. Hence the potential full-blown crisis.

Off the pitch, we're forced to question whether the captain of the national team, John Terry, is racist; and, more widely, whether racism is a widespread problem in the Premier League (you'll recall that Liverpool striker Luis Suarez is also currently facing an investigation into alleged racism against Patrice Evra).

As you'll no doubt already be aware, the allegations against Terry were lodged after last weekend's defeat at QPR, when he was seemingly caught on camera calling Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand a "f***ing black c***."

Terry has claimed it's all a big misunderstanding, explaining that he was merely denying using the phrase and had prefaced his comment with: "I didn't call you a ..." — words which were lost on the television footage because Ashley Cole moves in front of the camera at the vital moment.

That's a plausible enough explanation and, unless players within earshot are willing to testify otherwise, it's difficult to see how Terry's claims can be disclaimed. TV pictures might prove that he used a particular phrase, but how can they ever prove that he didn't say something else at a time when his mouth was out of shot?

Having said that, I'm inclined not to believe him. If Terry found the phrase objectionable, why would he use it in self-defence? Wouldn't he just say, "I didn't say that," rather than repeating the actual phrase itself? Whatever. We don't know; it's all conjecture, and nobody really knows the truth except Terry and, perhaps, two or three other players within earshot.

However the FA concludes its investigation, the episode casts yet another major question mark over Terry's suitability to captain the national team, and it must have been a mental distraction to Terry during the build-up to the meeting with Arsenal. Both Terry and his club need a quick response — fortunately for them, upcoming fixtures against Genk and Blackburn provide the ideal opportunity.

On a wider level, I agree with QPR's Malaysian owner Tony Fernandes, who has stated his belief that there is not a significant problem with racism in English football.

Although racism hasn't been totally eradicated from the game — because it hasn't been eradicated from society and sport merely reflects society — the problem is far less acute than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Black players used to routinely suffer vile abuse such as monkey chants — John Barnes, for example, was regularly pelted with bananas during his playing days with Liverpool — but incidents of racism (even if Terry and Suarez are both guilty) are now a rare exception rather than a commonplace evil.

That doesn't mean we should take racism lightly; Terry and Suarez deserve a lengthy ban and heavy fine if they are found guilty. But it does mean we shouldn't jump to rash conclusions and brand the entire league a hotbed of racism. And, of course, the media would never descend into such short-term sensationalism...

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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