The Chelsea Daily Drivel (Catch Up) - Zidane helped Chelsea & Ossie's statue!

The Chelsea Daily Drivel is a daily update of all the stories concerning our club, the rumours, the opinions and more....

So here are the Chelsea news updates on Tuesday 21st September 2010 including: Match report from Sunday, Hilario is injured and out for three weeks, Holloway believes Chelsea treated Blackpool as if they were Manchester United, Mikel believes in Chelsea's physical power, Ancelotti states that Zidane helped him as a coach to lead Chelsea to a flying start in the Premier League, Roman decides on more cut backs at the club as the players are told by Buck before the Blackpool game and the Peter Osgood statue at the Bridge latest.

Firstly if you haven't seen it, don't forget to check out my match report after the Blackpool game here. Do you agree with me about the second half?.

Next in this catch up edition of the Chelsea Daily Drivel is all the Chelsea news from Sunday to today. We heard the news before the Blackpool game that Hilario is out for three weeks. He suffered an injury in training so it leaves Turnbull as the backup to Cech and more than likely starting tomorrow against Newcastle. Hilario injured his rib in training & we hope he makes a speedy recovery.

Back to Sunday's game and Ian Holloway, who paid Chelsea plenty of compliments after the game, has spoken as to why he believes Chelsea are World Class team and that's because we approached the game against Holloway's side as "if they were playing against Manchester United!". He said:

"I think we've seen so far that some people take us for granted and under-estimate us a little bit, but the Chelsea certainly didn't. That is exactly why they are worthy champions. They did their job, they killed us off and then they eased off in the second half.

We managed to do some things in the second half but they had already got the game won.

I thought some of the movement Chelsea showed was a bit different. I haven't seen that before and it caused some of my players problems. Because we let a few goals in we forgot what to do and how to do it, and I had to remind my lads of that at half-time.

But Chelsea have world-class players and I have seen just how good they are at first hand. Mr Abramovich has obviously spent his money wisely and they have fantastic players there now."

Now to Mikel who had another good game on Sunday and for me has been really consistantly good in all five games. He has spoken not only of our quality we have and world class players, but of the strength and power we possess as a side. He said:

"We have strong guys, We have a lot of six footers. Even someone like Frank Lampard, you don't realise how strong he is. Essien is shorter but is very, very strong.

Our physical presence through the middle with Didier Drogba up front and John Terry and Alex at the back really works well for Chelsea. Ashley Cole may be smaller but if you think he is a pushover, he is strong."

He has a point as time and time again when you watch back the coverage of one of our games, you often hear the commentator state just how strong and tall we are as a side and this is one of the many strengths we now have as a unit all over the pitch.

Carlo Ancelotti now and he has credited Chelsea's great start to the Premier League so far this season to Zinedine Zidane. Chelsea have scored 21 goals and just conceded the one after five games. Ancelotti has stated that our powerful style of attacking play comes from a time when he had to coach Zidane at Juventus. He said:

"Before, when I started to train, I had an identity which I put on my teams. I didn't look at the characteristics of my players. I wanted to play 4-4-2 for the first two years. After that, I changed my ideas. It changed at Juventus – Zidane didn't want to play on the left, but in the centre, so I changed my formation for my players.

There is not a winning shape: you can play 4-4-2, 4-3-1-2. Now I look at the skills and characteristics of my players and put the right shape in the team for them."

(Source: Daily Mail)
You have to say even looking back to last season after the Blackburn game away, thank god Carlo did. Ever since he changed back to a style and formation that suits us we have been flying and scoring goals for fun. Let's hope he doesn't turn into a Ranieri and start tinkering too much this season and if he doesn't who know's where we could be come the end of the season. Hopefully at Wembley on more than one occasion!.

Roman Abramovich has again (it seems) decided that enough is enough and its time to make cut backs at the club. As reported in GOAL.COM's article the clubs officials and players have been told that they need to "live within their means" and these cutbacks are vital to ensure the financial stablity of the club. The article says:

This has led to players having their bonus payments reduced, which basically means a pay cut, and when addressed at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground earlier in the week by chairman Bruce Buck, they were told that the club will now have to generate the money first in order to bring new players to Stamford Bridge.

The Russian forked out over £230 million in his first two years with the club, signings the likes of Michael Essien, Didier Drogba and defender Ricardo Carvalho, as well as some of the least successful signings such as Damien Duff and Adrian Mutu, all for substantial sums.

The cutbacks will also mean slashing catering costs and coaching staff numbers at their Cobham training ground.

However players who signed a contract before 2009 will still have their win bonuses guaranteed.

Despite the cutbacks at Chelsea, Abramovich is still owed £726m by holding company Fordstam but the club have recorded a staggering loss of £493m since the Russian took over.

I think it's safe to say that everyone needs to be aware of the financial situation we are faced with these days and Roman is no different. There isn't any need to worry as far as I am concerned as this is what the long-term plan at Chelsea was anyway. Ok the Press are going to town on this story which is to be expected but I wouldn't be panicking at all Chelsea fans.

Finally to the Peter Osgood statue being erected at Stamford Bridge as a tribute to the "King of Stamford Bridge". Vital Football have an update on this as quoted below:

After the tragic, sad passing of the King of Stamford Bridge, Peter Osgood, in March of 2006, there were widespread calls from throughout the Chelsea fraternity for the club legend to be forever remembered.

In the months and years that followed, the football club announced plans to erect a statue in memory of, arguably, our greatest ever player. That tribute has been in the pipeline for a while now and, the club announced this week, will be officially unveiled next week.

The 9ft 4in statue will be placed outside the West Stand at Stamford Bridge, and will be unveilved in a private gathering on October 1st. It will be able to be visited by Blues fans for the first time for our visit of Arsenal on October 3rd.

Osgood scored 150 goals in more than a decade at the club, over two separate spells, and played a pivotal role in both our 1970 FA Cup final triumph and our European Cup Winners' Cup win the following year.

The statue of Ossie will join his ashes, which were buried beneath the penalty spot in front of the Shed End, as fitting and everlasting tributes to a Chelsea legend.

Please if you travel to Chelsea for the games or just pay us a visit now and again, please can you take time to visit the tribute to Ossie. I am so glad that he has been remembered officially at the club in a fitting tribute.