Chelsea not only failed to defend their title this season, but they will be missing from the Champions League next year too as inner turmoil and poor 2018 form saw them finishing outside the top four.
Coach Conte started having problems even before the season begun as he put all his trust in the new centre forward Morata, with Chelsea’s top goalscorer for the past three years Diego Costa going to war with the boss in July and never setting foot in London again until his departure in the winter.
Early in the campaign Conte looked like genius by signing Morata as he scored 6 goals in the opening 6 rounds. Unfortunately his form entered constant decline after that and for the rest of the campaign he managed to find the back of the net just 4 more times.
Hazard and Willian also had ups and downs in their form all season, both of them have been heavily linked with transfers away since the autumn, plus veteran Cahill was no longer the solid rock at the back and after making some costly mistakes in September and October he even lost his starting spot for several months.
Despite all these bumps on the way Chelsea’s results in 2017 were solid and they ended the calendar year sitting in third place. The League Cup was also exciting the fans with the Blues reaching the semi-final of this competition, but in January they were eliminated at this stage by Arsenal and also this was when their overall decline began.
Between January and March Chelsea won only two of their eight Premier League games to drop out of the top four, they never recovered from that, plus Conte’s men suffered early elimination in the Champions League at the hands of Barcelona.
Conte continued to cause controversy and at some point in the winter he omitted defender David Luiz from the first team, never to restore him there, also the signing of Giroud wasn’t welcomed very well, especially with Costa scoring goals for fun back in Spain.
Chelsea didn’t find a way to catch the top four in the Premier League before the end of the year, they made too many unexpected mistakes on the way, but at least some silverware was won as the Blues lifted the FA Cup in the cagy final against Man United.
