Did you know there is something wrong with Chelsea?

Despite their recent result against Manchester Utd and the increasing inevitability that they will win the title, the fact of the matter is that Chelsea aren't the force that they were at the beginning of the season. It's easy to forget how dominant Chelsea were for the first half of the season. It's almost plausible that Arsenal will catch them at this point. That would however, involve a very dramatic string of results which is unlikely to see from a José Mourinho team but, none the less, it is clear to see that Chelsea have not really dominated a game since the turn of the year, with the exception of a 5-0 win at Swansea. 

Reasons for this appear to be the dip in form of Cèsc Fabregas & Diego Costa and while that has contributed, that is not the whole story. Of course, many games have been played and players will tend to burn out towards the end of the season, but these are professional footballers, world class professional footballers, and as a result must work through this to maintain that status. 

Here are the main reasons Chelsea are failing to convince at the moment. 

Fabregas has stopped making forwards runs.

Lets start with Fabregas. The dynamic midfielder was as important to Chelsea as any player. He has an unbelievable amount of assists. If you watch the games from the start of the season, Fabregas would follow his pass more often while Hazard drifted inside to create space for Costa in the box. With Oscar, Willian, Hazard and Fabregas all moving and executing perfect one touch small passes, Chelsea were cutting open defences and looking graceful and destructive at the same time. If you watch Fabregas now, he has stopped making that run towards the ball after the little ball into Hazard on the edge of the box, he is staying where he is. As a result, Hazard is sticking closer to the wing. Perhaps, it's a combination of players drifting in less and Fabregas failing to make as many attacking moves. We shouldn't rule out that Fabregas is under instruction from Mourinho to stay more defensively minded. Although Fabregas's record suggests he makes a habit of slowing down in the second half of the season.

Oscar not up to it often enough.

Oscar is a great player but can often disappear into a game with a sloppy performance. It is okay for a player to not make a huge impact every now and then, but when a player comes on and is counter productive it becomes a problem. Oscar has too much quality to be surplus to requirements at Chelsea though and has not been poor enough to be blamed for Chelsea's dip in form.

Willian doesn't offer enough going forward.

Chelsea supporters love Willian for his work rate (and rightly so). It does make him indispensable. However, he is not world class going forward, not in the way Hazard is. He doesn't contribute enough goals. This needs to change if they really want to challenge Europe'e elite. They need players in his position that pull their weight when other players are in bad form. Willian is not in bad form but still not scoring. 

Hazard doesn't score as many as he should despite his obvious quality. 

Hazard is world class, he really is. Few players in the world hold the ball as well as him. Robben and Messi are the only two who are perhaps still ahead of him in dribbling. Hazard fails to match the score tally that the other two do however. He is undoubtedly one of Chelsea's best players (if not best) and should not be criticised for his performances but there is no doubt he needs even more goals to step up to the next level. If he added an extra 10 goals to his current tally there would be no question that Chelsea will win the title in the next 5 games.

Cuadrado doesn't look up to it. Need Schürlle back.

Despite not getting many games, when he has played, Cuadrado has looked well below par. He may need a bit of time but Shürlle was a far more reliable replacement and Chelsea may have financially broke even, but did not do good business there. It is likely however, that Shürlle was the one who chose to leave. Chelsea need more game changing players from the Bench when it's not working for them on the pitch.

Too little squad rotation. Lead to good players leaving the club.

With the squad being rotated so often it means good players are being left out of the team for very long periods of time. Players like Schürlle decide to leave the club. It means the 18 members of the squad fall short after the first 14-15. This sounds like it shouldn't be a problem but a Champions league title winning team should have better quality on the bench (and better quality on the field)

Not enough players are world class.

Chelsea have too many squad players. Hazard, Fabregas, Matic & Costa are the only world class players. Oscar shows glimpses but isn't regular enough. Costa is injured, Fabregas isn't playing as he did. They now have a shortage. They could actually do with more 'Game Winning' players. 

Finally - Mourinho loves to defend.

As briefly mentioned in the section about Cesc Fabregas, everything could be explained by Mourinho's tactics. As Chelsea march on to the title with the recent win against Manchest Utd, that really has solidified that Chelsea probably are the best team in the Premier League, Mourinho's tactics supposedly were intentionally defensive. He expected to have around 30% possession and he stated that his team were only waiting for mistakes. While this gets results, it arguably shouldn't really be a feature of a top European team. However, it has worked on this occasion and it is likely that ever since Mourinho sensed the title was in his grasp he has taken his foot off the gas and instead put the team in neutral. So Chelsea have coast towards the title while Arsenal have been foot down for the last 2 months but true to his mastery, Mourinho seems to have calculated that won't be enough and i'm sure Chelsea supporters would like to believe there is still some petrol left in reserve if the team find themselves in the unlikely position where they need it, 

So despite all these points it does seem that Chelsea will win the title, but are they winning it in the right way? Also, lets not forget their poor performance in Europe. Their summer transfers will show us how the blues eventually assess their season?