Can Chelsea be caught?

Well, we're moving into the all-important festive period with regards to the football season and Chelsea are looking like pretty good bets for the title. And I wonder what price you would get for a Chelsea double of Premier League and Champions Leage? Can they be caught?

Realistically, the only team who will be competing with Chelsea for the Premier League title is Manchester United (of course!). Arsenal have just lost their talisman, van Persie, for 5 months and Fabregas is still too young, in my opinion, to carry the young team until van Persie's return. Plus, they got tonked 3-0 at home to Chelsea at the weekend.

Liverpool are showing that last season was a flash in the pan and will be doing well to qualify for the Champions League next season, never mind challenge for the Premier League title. They're a flaky 2 man team. And as both Gerrard and Torres can always be guaranteed to miss parts of the season through injury, then Liverpool are going to struggle for goals and dynamicism in the midfield for crucial parts of the season. Plus their manager, the Fat Spanish Waiter, appears to be slowly going insane. Combine this with a pair of Americans who are taking Liverpool to the brink of financial ruin and it all adds up to be a fine old mess.

Manchester City..........Well. Where do you start? I actually think that Mark Hughes is a decent manager. But you just can't shake the feeling that calamatous comedy is always just around the corner at middle Eastlands. Robinho is hankering to leave for Spain with Barcelona the likely destination. Santa Cruz is still regaining fitness. Adebayor seems to have gone off the boil since his explosive start to the season. And Sir Alex Ferguson appears to be vindicated in not forking out up to £47M on Tevez who shows on a weekly basis that he is just a poor man's Rooney without actually scoring the goals. Combine that with a less-than-solid defence (£26M on Lescott FFS?!? ) and it all points towards another trophyless season at the Bertiedome.

So, Manchester United and Chelsea are left as the only 2 realistic title contenders. If Chelsea continue to play the way they are then it would take a brave man to bet against them for the title. However, there are a couple of potential problems that will kick in for them as we move into the new year. The first is the African Cup of Nations. Chelsea will be losing 2 of their stars of the season so far, Kalou and Drogba, for up to a month in January. This could well turn out to be a critical period for Chelsea, though if they can maintain at least a 5 point lead, as they currently have, then they might get away with it. The second problem is the age of the spine of their team. Drogba, Anelka, Ballack and Lampard are all the wrong side of 30. At the moment this doesn't really matter. We're only a couple of months into the season. However, as we play through the wet and soggy winter months with heavy pitches and a clusterbomb of fixtures, age WILL become a factor as the older players will be rested for less-critical matches. However, Chelsea's manager is Ancelotti who's previous club are famous for increasing the longevity of their players through science and diet.

United will have a difficult time catching Chelsea but it's by no means impossible. However, I still think we're missing players in 2 key positions if we are going to really push Chelsea. The first position is in Midfield. I would describe our midfield as solid which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, in the past we've had driving players like Keane who have given us the extra biting edge we're lacking at the moment. Scholes isn't a bad player in that respect but as he gets older and (supposedly) wiser, he still shows no signs of being able to tackle-a major weakness for a swashbuckling midfielder. The Scottish Player is undoubtedly one of our players of the season so far, but he's never going to be a midfield dynamo. Carrick is a great player at breaking down opposition plays then spraying perfect passes to get the attack going, but again he lacks the bite.

So the saviour of our midfield is........?


Owen Hargreaves. Hargreaves has been out injured for over a year now and he has been sorely missed. Ronaldo last season and his exploits largely covered up for Hargreaves. I'm not suggesting that Hargreaves and Ronaldo are comparable players, they're not. But they both brought something different to the United midfield that we don't currently have. Hargreaves is the closest to a Roy Keane-type player in the Premier League today. He can tackle, he runs from box-to-box the whole game, he can defend well (England's right back at World Cup 2006), is class going forward and can take a mean free-kick. The sooner he gets back from injury the better (and rumours are that he will be back either just before or just after Christmas). The fact that Hargreaves is still being talked of as a member of Capello's World Cup squad next Summer, despite the fact that he hasn't played since September 2008, shows what a class player he really is.

The second position is striker. At the moment, realistically, we have 2 top class strikers in Rooney and Berbatov. Owen is never going to be more than an impact sub from the bench and Wellbeck and Macheda, though showing glimpses of being potential stars of the future, can't maintain it. We need one more top class striker. And I honestly believe that that top class striker needs to be an out and out goalscorer to feed off the creativity of Rooney and Berbatov. So who's the player to fill this role? A proven, world-class goalscorer, who's actually available?

I can think of 1 for definite and 1 who would be a bit of a punt, but one worth taking.

One striker who you can guarantee would fit seamlessly into the United starting eleven and bag you a hat-full of goals is David Villa at Valencia. He has shown time and time again for Valencia and Spain that he is a world-class goalscorer. Not only that he has made no secret of his wish to leave Valencia for pastures new. This summer it looked as though he was on his way to either Madrid or Barcelona and he made it known (through his agent) that he only wanted to remain in Spain. However, those moves fell through and Barca signed Ibrahimovic and Madrid signed Ronaldo and Benzema, effectively closing the door for any future moves for Villa to one of these 2 clubs.

Fast forward 4 months and Villa has now sacked his agent and is now saying that he would consider a move abroad. Liverpool and Arsenal couldn't afford him and Chelsea appear to have set their sights on Aguero, leaving just United in the Premier League who could realistically attract him. Whether or not we can actually afford him is another debate. Conflicting reports suggest that either a. We're skint and all the Ronaldo money has gone into servicing the ballooning debt imposed on the club by the Gimps or b. we still have a large chunk of the Ronaldo money (around £60M) sitting around waiting to be spent. Let's see what shappens.....

The second striker who would be a bit of a punt is currently playing in Holland for Ajax. Luis Suarez is only 22, would cost around £18M and has no trouble finding the net. He's banged in 56 goals for Ajax in just 78 appearances.

So roll on the January tansfer window and lets see what happens.............