There has, as usual, been plenty not to like about Chelsea this season — from the Mark Clattenburg affair to David Luiz’s sneaky giggle — but how can the neutral fail to warm to a team featuring Juan Mata?
Those who voted for him as Footballer of the Year had a case. Without quite reaching the spectacular heights of Gareth Bale, the little Spaniard has been even more consistent in scoring and making goals.
The electorate of the Football Writers’ Association, who honour Bale tomorrow night, must also take into account behaviour and it is hard to recall Mata’s standards dropping — he just gets on with the game. He has all the professionalism of a recent winner, Scott Parker, and great vision and technique on top.
So Andre Villas-Boas picked an odd time to accuse Chelsea of lacking style, even though the former Stamford Bridge assistant and, briefly, manager seemed to be making a more complicated point than some of this morning’s headlines implied.
To reiterate the argument made here at the time of the false allegation against Clattenburg — it was all the more regrettable because Chelsea under Roberto di Matteo appeared to be developing in the image of Mata (above) and his fellow technicians Oscar and Eden Hazard, achieving an attractive style, overtaking Arsenal in London’s beauty parade.
Rafa Benitez has hardly undone this work, as Hazard’s recent surge in form emphasises, so the team go into tonight’s potential Champions League decider concerned only by the heavy schedule that might entail a shadow side doing duty at Villa Park on Saturday.
I still have a hunch that Tottenham might keep their hopes alive. But Bale and his colleagues could have done without their manager — whatever his mixed memories of Stamford Bridge — offering extra motivation to the opposition.
