To me, all the problems stem from midfield and essentially boil back to the loss of Kante and the fact that we haven't been able to replace him effectively.
Blaming the loss of Kante at this stage may seem wrong, but I don't think so.
I said when he left that he's that good that Chelsea have just won the 2016/17 title. And it's looking that way.
I said all last season and still stick to it that even when people were praising Kante, they underestimated what he brings to the team. People compare him to Makelele, but to me I always saw him closer to a Vieira. Kante broke up the play at the back and won it back for us - which is what we're massively, massively missing now, but also (the bit that I think people overlook) is that he was then very good at getting us moving forwards after he won it back - whether that was laying it off quickly to the likes of Mahrez when we were deep so that we could then fly forwards, or running it forward himself before giving it to Drinkwater or Albrighton to play the more precise forward passes.
This is what we're missing. And I'm not necessarily sure anyone is to blame for that...
- Andy King and Amartey simply don't possess those skills (although Amartey is still young and I think people are overly harsh on him) and weren't made to play as much of a role as they have
- Drinkwater, despite being one of our best players this season, also doesn't have the skills to do all of that by himself. He's a very good passer and also a good tackler, but can't do it by himself and doesn't have the same pace/dribbling ability as Kante to do that transition play.
- The club tried to find a replacement for an irreplacable player - Mendy's come in and got injured on his debut which is just bad luck
- They tried to sign other midfielders after Mendy (N'Zonzi, Adrien Silva and I think others) but didn't manage to secure deals for them - this is where there maybe is some blame
And I think that's where all of our problems stem from....
- The defence, who overachieved more than anyone else last season when you consider their ages and careers so far, now don't have solid cover in front of them (and are missing Kasper behind them; not a criticism of Zieler or an excuse for the defence, but Kasper is just a much better keeper who's made saves this season and last that rescue points).
- The midfield aren't doing their job as well, which means we can't get the ball to our dangerous attacking players as quickly or effectively
- Mahrez is double/triple marked and we've not got anyone else to drag defenders away from him
- There is too much of a gap between midfield and attack
- Vardy's just getting long balls most of the time from what I've seen which is NOT what made us successful last season
I could go on...
But to me it's a major problem because how do you replace Kante? He's one of a kind. We don't need someone as good as him to achieve our goals, but we need someone to fill that gap which at the minute we don't have and there's big pressure on Mendy when he comes back.
But it also shows the weaknesses elsewhere - Huth even at times last season was getting caught out.
To me, it's a personnel change which can only be fixed by recruitments in central midfield and defence, but that can't happen until January.
Until then, we need to be playing 3 central midfielders and adapt to what we've got.
