November blues continue as Chelsea as slump continues at West Brom

Over the past few years, the month of November has been a very bad month for Chelsea as the team some how seem to lose the momentum and this season also has proved so far that the curse of November is still there. A 2-1 loss to West Brom meant that Chelsea are now 4 league games without a win. With Man United losing to Norwich later in the day, it was also an opportunity missed to close the gap. As it stands, the Blues are now 4 points behind new league leaders Manchester City and 3 points behind United.

Di Matteo decided to bench key players for the game as many of them were on duty for their country during mid week. Oscar,Ramires,Mata and Ivanovic were absent from the starting line up. RDM's rotation has been really poor and the Blues have used only 19 players in the league, the least in the Premier League. With the talent at his disposal, Di Matteo should be using more of his players to prevent the key players from burning out. With Mata and Oscar benched, RDM started with Moses,Hazard and Sturridge behing Torres. Again for some reasons, Marin was again left on the bench. Hazard has normally played on the left side for Chelsea and with Marin's preferred position being the left, one would have thought that the Belgian could also be given a break and play Marin in the position. The Belgian was however one of the brighter players on the pitch and scored Chelsea's lone goal by heading in Azpilicueta's cross. Torres was again anonymous.With Sturridge moving to the center when Torres was taken off,Chelsea carved out some chances for scoring. Sturridge did his chances no harm as he forced the keeper into a couple of good saves. But the "selfish" nature in him was again evident as he chose to shoot instead of passing to a better placed team mate.

The lack of quality up front is really hurting Chelsea and with Torres again misfiring after the good start to the season ,the need to get a good striker in January will be the top priority. News reports suggest that Falcao will arrive in January. I don't really think the Chelsea need to go spent another 50 million on a striker and would prefer Lukaku brought back from his loan spell.