Chelsea facing wait to right Premier League wrongs as international break shuts down fixtures
Don’t you just hate it when the Premier League season kicks off – excitement evident by the drooling from the mouth as Chelsea hammer home yet another goal in a faultless start to the campaign, and then it all comes to a screeching halt for something called the international break?
Okay, Chelsea have not been faultless, far from it in fact, as fans made it clear to the players by booing them having witnessed yet another insipid home defeat to a so-called middle-table team – in this case to Nottingham Forest last weekend.
But it’s the fact that they can’t rectify, or perhaps even dig themselves even deeper into a hole, because the players have to fly to all corners of the world to represent their country in qualifiers of some sort or just friendlies.
Head coach Mauricio Pochettino, left, would have loved to have had serious training time with his charges following that lamentable 1-0 defeat, but he only had four players left in Cobham to work with.
The men return to ‘action’ at Bournemouth on September 17.
The women are in the final preparations for the start of their WSL campaign, which kicks off at Stamford Bridge with a derby against Spurs on October 1.
Head coach Emma Hayes has all of her World Cup troupers back now from their holiday and they are, as I write, in the Algarve in Portugal for some hot-weather training and team-building exercises. The get-together is just as much about building relationships with new players than it is about building fitness.
But Hayes is good at running both elements so that they complement each other well.
Chelsea beat Italian champions AS Roma on Sunday night 3-2 at Kingsmeadow.
Asked what their goals for this season are, new signings Mia Fishel and Ashley Lawrence were both unanimous.
Fishel said: “If you want to be the best team in the world, you have to win the Champions League.”
Lawrence said: “I signed here to win titles, and we have a very ambitious club, with Emma leading the way, so I want as many trophies as possible.”
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