What do you think of Nemanja Matic since his return to Chelsea?

Speaking after our disappointing draw against West Brom on Tuesday night, Nemanja Matic has re-iterated that Chelsea will continue to fight and believe in themselves until the end of the season.

You would be hard pushed to find anyone who has not been impressed by Nemanja Matic since he made his return to Chelsea a couple of weeks ago. He left here a youngster learning the game and has returned as a man with such presence in midfield and almost the complete player, I have been so impressed with the way he has just slotted into the team.

You look at the performance one on one with Yaya Toure and I think Toure got the better of him maybe once? Matic was everywhere, mopping up the loose ball, winning tackles, giving the ball early, playing good quick passes and even coming forward with the ball in attacking areas hitting the post!

Moving forward to Newcastle and even the other night against West Brom, Matic was one of our best players and now delivers a consistent performance in arguably, one of the most important positions on the pitch.

After the draw at WBA the other night, Matic spoke about the title race and said:

"I said after the Man City game (which Chelsea won 1-0) that we'll fight until the end of the season.

We need to take it game by game and play as well as we can in order to win matches. At the end of the season we'll see if we can be champions.

We always believe, we just try to improve and give our best. We have a young team, we are not favourites but if we have a chance to be champions we want to take it.

We are not happy because we drew 1-1, we came here to win but that's football, that's life. Now we have to concentrate on the next training session and next game." 

Such a mature head on young shoulders. He is spot on though isn't he. If anything, it turned out to be a decent point after City was called off and Arsenal only picked up a single point against United last night.

As for Matic? You can see why the club were keen to pay the money they did to bring him back here.

Jose talks of rebuilding and putting together another team capable of dominating the game for the next ten or so years. You have to believe that Matic will become such an integral part of the new spine of the Chelsea team through that period of time.

Chelsea always looked slightly weak in that area as people (not including me) are still not 100% convinced with Mikel in that role. In addition, it will be interesting to see with what happens with Oriol Romeu and if next summer he is given a chance to play his part in Mourinho's plans.

Matic has given us real quality in that role now and we look so much stronger there.

What do you people think of Nemanja Matic since his return to Chelsea?

Carefree & KTBFFH!