Blues back to winning ways in the League

Yesterday saw the first premier league win for Rafa Benitez as Chelsea boss. After tasting success against FC Nordjaelland in the Champions League, the first premier league win came after Rafa started with 2 draws and a loss. The exit from the Champions league is a huge disappointment and Chelsea now has become the first champions to not make it into the knock out stage. The draw at home against Juventus, in the first match of the campaign certainly hurt us.

The EPL match against Sunderland saw us returning back to winning games and if Rafa has been brought into to find the lost goal scoring boots of Fernando Torres, it certainly seems to be working. 2 goals against Norjaelland was followed by 2 goals against Sunderland, of which one was a penalty. That Torres wanted to take the penalty shows that the confidence is certainly returning. 4 goals in 2 games is without doubt the best performance from Torres till date in the Blue shirt, but I wouldn't go on and say that he is back. FC Nordjaelland and Sunderland are not really tough opposition and unless Torres finds the back of the net regularly in big matches, the 50 million price tag will still seem like money poorly spent.

Now lets say Torres keeps on scoring during the Rafa Benitez regime. Where does that leave Roman Abramovich in the pursuit of Pep Guardiola? While Benitez might be able to lift the side back to winning ways, Chelsea are never going to play the tika-taka style with Benitez at the helm. Even yesterday, Chelsea were comfortably leading 3-0 when Bertrand came in for Moses. Now that was a very negative move. With the side playing well, it would have been better to go for more goals rather than resorting to the negative ploy of playing a defensive minded Bertrand. Not that it made a difference though as Bertrand played yet another game which showed that he is no where near Cole. If reports are to be believed, Cole will be allowed to go in January or at the end of the season and I certainly don't think that Bertrand is an able replacement. Yes he is a good enough left back,but certainly not in the category of a Cole or Baines.Trying out Patrick van Aanholt wouldn't be a bad option either. The problem with Di Matteo was that he didn't rotate the squad enough and at the end of his regime, Chelsea had used only 19 players in the EPL, the lowest in the league. Rafa Benitez was saying about the importance of rotation, and using Bertrand in place of Moses might have been a case of player rotation, but again why not play Marin? Ok this is not my first post saying that Chelsea haven't used Marin properly, but I certainly feel that he hasn't done much wrong in the warm up matches or in the few minutes he has got on the pitch. Eden Hazard has been playing in almost all the matches and it is high time that he gets a rest. The Belgian will face a burnout if started in every match, and with Marin's natural position being left back, starting Marin in place of Hazard wouldn't be a bad idea. All the substitution proved was that Rafa is not the way forward for Chelsea if Roman wants us to play the Barcelona way. If Dailymail is to be believed, Guardiola may not even join Chelsea with Jurgen Klopp being lined up as an alternative.

Soon after the match, the Blues traveled to Japan for the Club World Cup, where the Blues will play on the 13th in the semi finals and on 16th in the finals if they qualify.