It’s been fun having Job Obi Mikel starting a podcast as he’s happy to get stuck in on the current squad to a degree that some pundits, especially former Chelsea players, wouldn’t.
Today he’s been laying into our centre halves, calling out two of them as simply not good enough for Chelsea. He said he was pleased we’d signed Tosin Adarabioyo because some of our current options weren’t up to it at the moment, and may in fact never be:
“I don’t think Benoit Badiashile is the guy for Chelsea, no. [Axel] Disasi, no. They’re still young players, they will develop,” he said in quotes picked up by Caught Offside.
“We need proven, two top centre-backs who will come in there and stabilise that back four. We need that. We need two world-class centre-halves.”
A reminder that players can surprise you
We’re not going to come down nearly as harshly on this pair as Mikel has, for a few reasons.
Most importantly, neither has been at the club for long, and the period they’ve spent here has been one of exceptional change and confusion. Centre backs in particular need to be judged within the context of the team as a whole, and Chelsea last season were poor defensively from goalkeeper to striker. If you dropped one of them into a really smoothly functioning Man City or Arsenal team, don’t you think they’d look better?
Secondly, we’ve learned from the recent past not to write players off. Think about how many Chelsea fans felt about Rudiger after a year or even two years at the club. He was considered unreliable and many were convinced he would never cut it. Now he’s a star at Real Madrid and a key player in their Double win this season.
Our hopes aren’t high, but we’re certainly not ruling out this pair just yet.