Squad Ranking system: Where Blues strikers fall out [Part-1]

Chelsea’s strikers since Drogba’s departure:

Torres, Sturridge, Lukaku, Demba Ba, and Eto’o. Out of all these forwards, Fernando Torres somehow managed to emerge as the first choice whenever he was fully fit. Some may argue that during the Di Matteo and Benitez eras, putting Torres out of the picture would have been senseless considering the salary he earns, but the same cannot be said about Jose Mourinho.

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Jose selects the best possible team and isn’t afraid of the star status, any salary issue, or the money paid to the player. Our current forward crop may not be the best we could have had with all the money we possess, but surely it ain’t the worst either.

Getting rid of Sturridge was a good move for Chelsea, no matter how many goals he scores at Liverpool. There is something called team ethic, which he lacks, as well as the tactical awareness that most of our players possess. Sturridge is a fool. He has the legs to run, the talent and skills to shoot, and the composure in front of goals.

But he could not prove his adaptability to beat Torres in the starting lineup. He may score so many goals, but he will hardly have the trophies that he would’ve gotten if he could have made himself the first choice. There is a 50-50 chance Sturridge would have flourished under Mourinho.
It all depends on the squad’s ranking. That is why we need a new star center forward.

Torres likes to run at defenses; Willian does it better.

Eto’o likes drop-of-the-shoulder dribbling, and Hazard simply outshines everyone in dribbling.

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Ba likes to shoot until he scores. No one gives him that many chances. The fact that he has the physical strength to penetrate the defense means he is the one who’ll get the most one-on-one chances with the goalkeepers, and still he ends up missing loads before scoring.

Thus, these forwards are not the best at what they do, hence the passers would look for our attacking midfielders and not Torres, Eto’o, or Ba, unlike in Liverpool, where Gerrard would find Torres and he had to beat 1-2 players and score, or in Newcastle, where Ba and Cisse would shoot and shoot and shoot. In that regard, we have better shooters in both our other forwards, plus the added talents of Lampard, Hazard, Schurrle, Willian, Oscar, and now Salah.

So given the squad ranking system, which is a psychological ranking that every player and coach has in his mind based on confidence, our strikers would be somewhere in the middle because the team and the coach do not expect them to score every game. Meanwhile, Liverpool, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, etc. are typically those teams that hold strikers with high confidence and responsibility.

When Torres arrived at Chelsea, he was the star, at the top of the squad ranking, and everyone expected him to score every game. Hence, everyone looked for Nando and provided him with chances to score. He was terribly out of form in his first season; hence, it was decided that an aging Drogba was still better than Torres, and hence he fell behind in the squad ranking for the first time in his club career!

It kills the confidence. There are a few reasons for his form drop, mainly Liverpool because they made him play through recovery periods of his injury, meaning he had to go through 2 surgeries in the 2009–10 season, hence being out of form during the World Cup and again falling behind in the pecking order.

Read [Part-2] of this article HERE