The Honeymoon is over AVB sort the defence out now!

When a top team scores three goals at home they are expected to win the points. Any team that concedes five goals at home means that something is dreadfully wrong!

Chelsea haven’t been able to keep a clean sheet all season and their defence doesn’t look capable of doing so any time soon. Virtually every Chelsea fan knows already it, but Branislav Ivanovic is a far better right back than Jose Bosingwa – and a far better right back than he is a centre back!

Not wishing a knee jerk reaction from a fabulous game of football (for anyone who isn’t a Chelsea fans) point of view, but this poor area of our game is now ‘out there’ for every other team to see, explore and take advantage of.

We can all argue that the Arsenal keeper should have been sent off, that Flo Malouda should not have given JT a suicide back pass etc etc. The fact remains that Chelsea’s defence is shaky and looks like conceding every time when faced with good movement and numbers by the opposition.

It’s time that AVB stopped messing around with Bosingwa and installed Ivanovich as his first choice right back until January, when we can bring in another central defender (maybe England’s Gary Cahill), he should use Alex or Luiz depending on the opposition. Chelsea’s problems aren’t in midfield or up front, with the percentage of play we are forcing or the amount of chances that we are creating, it’s simply in defence.

Playing with ‘freedom’ and for the ‘collective’ is all well and good AVB. but however Chelsea’s defence is currently shocking and it’s costing the team games, titles, cups and competitions and something positive needs to be done about it.

Drop Bosingwa for Ivanovich NOW, make sure we are ready to sign a world class central defender in January and put Romeu ahead of Mikel in the pecking order. The honeymoon is now over and it’s high time this dreadful defence is sorted out, even if it means dropping 4-3- 3 against certain opposition.

By Alan Franks