After watching the Premier League’s evening kick-off on Saturday night between Chelsea and Everton at Stamford Bridge, Manchester United Class of 92 member Paul Scholes has come out and publicly backed arch-rivals Chelsea to win the title under Antonio Conte. Scholes commented in this way after the Blues completed their 5th League win in a row using the 3-4-3 formation as they thumped the Toffees 5-0 at the Bridge.
Scholes has been watching his former club under Chelsea’s former manager Jose Mourinho and he has been very frustrated with the Red-Devils so far this campaign. The legendary midfielder even went as far as crossing out Jose Mourinho’s name on the team-sheet during United’s loss to Fenerbahce in the Europa League on Thursday night when he was working as a TV pundit.
Scholes feels that Chelsea are slightly more experienced, are gradually building momentum and are looking like very serious title contenders – even ahead of the universally impressive Liverpool who Scholes thinks will run out of steam before the end of the season on account of the high tempo they play at. Speaking in his punditry role for BT Sport, Paul Scholes talked about how Antonio Conte has Chelsea playing in a similar style and intensity to the way Claudio Ranieri had Leicester City playing last season on the way to winning the title with a tight defensive unit and a rampant counter-attack.
When talking about possible Premier League winning clubs on BT Sport as reported by TEAMtalk, Scholes had nothing to say about Manchester City but had this to say about Chelsea and the other clubs he feels are contending for the title:
“I think their (Chelsea’s) style of play is almost suited more to winning the title than a couple of the teams above them,” Scholes said.
“Liverpool play a high energy game that is very good at the minute, but Tottenham did the same last season and blew up in March, April. Can Liverpool keep that up, I’m not too sure.
“The way Chelsea play is more or less counter-attacking football, what Leicester did last year, it is very much suited to winning the league.
“They obviously have the quality, they have the experience, and players who have won the league before, you would have to give them a great chance.”
Scholes talked up Manchester United’s title winning chances too (perhaps out of loyalty rather than because he feels they can actually win it). Scholes expects United to return to the top 4 sooner rather than later and thinks that Jose Mourinho’s men are ready to battle it out with the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal for the crown. We are not so sure United are cohesive enough or mentally tough enough as a unit to mount a serious title challenge this year but Chelsea certainly look like title-winning material. Chelsea started to look like potential title winners during this splendid current run of 5 League games where they have used 3 at the back and have not only won all 5 games but have not conceded a single goal while scoring 16 goals themselves.
As other managers have said (like Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino) 3 at the back is nothing special but out of some of the teams who have tried to use it this season like West Ham, Manchester City, Tottenham and Chelsea only Spurs and Chelsea have had any real success with the system. Since Chelsea have used it 5 times in a row successfully to Spurs using it once successfully and the other 2 teams immediately switched to 4 at the back after an unsuccessful first half you would have to say that Chelsea are the best at using the system. As we mentioned in our previous article the defensive strength the Blues have with the system is extremely pleasing but the freedom it allows Hazard and others to express themselves and create goal-scoring chances is an enormous benefit as the system appears to confuse Chelsea’s opponents like it did against Everton on Saturday.