Premier League: Diego Costa Embodies Chelsea’s Demise
This time last year, one could have persuasively argued that Chelsea’s Diego Costa stood as the foremost striker in the Premier League.
In the six months that followed the Spaniard’s £32 million arrival from Atletico Madrid in July, 2014, the 27-year-old scored 18 goals in 25 appearances for Jose Mourinho’s side and led the Chelsea frontline with a dynamism and aggression unseen at Stamford Bridge since the departure of Didier Drogba in the summer of 2012.
But since netting a brace in Chelsea’s outstanding 0-5 demolition of Swansea at the Liberty Stadium in January, Costa’s goals have dried-up. The Spaniard’s latest blank in Chelsea’s 1-0 Premier League defeat at Stoke yesterday evening means that he has now only scored three goals in 16 appearances this term, having netted just 3 in 12 appearances in the second-half of last season.
The player, of course, must shoulder a large share of the blame for this decline.
7 – Jose Mourinho has lost seven league games in a campaign for the first time as a manager. Humbled.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) November 7, 2015
Costa arrived at Chelsea having scored 36 goals in 52 appearances for Atletico Madrid in the 2013/14 season, helping Diego Simeone’s side to the club’s first La Liga title since 1996 and a place in the Champions League final. There is no question, therefore, that the Brazilian born forward is capable of performing at an elite level for a full European season, and he admitted himself at the start of last month that he had returned to Chelsea overweight for pre-season training.
Costa has looked sluggish throughout the start to the new Premier League campaign. The forward has lacked the guile and intelligence of movement which made him so effective a year ago, and he now appears more interested in riling-up opposition centre-halves than he does in evading them in order to score goals.
The manner in which Costa provoked Arsenal defender Gabriel Paulista into getting himself sent-off during Chelsea’s 2-0 defeat of their London rivals in September showed that his gamesmanship can still be effective. However, the success of such techniques is always contingent upon an opponent losing his composure, and the problem Costa faces now is that defenders are content to ignore his provocations, comfortable in the knowledge that he lacks the ability to hurt their side in possession.
After all, Shawcross himself is no shrinking violet but the manner in which the 28-year-old was content to absorb Costa’s digs and watch as the game passed the forward by attested to the fact that he was the one in control of the duel throughout the match. The calm, measured nature of the defender’s comments to Sky Sports television at full-time leant further weight to this perception.
“Diego Costa is a great striker and is always going to give you a challenge,” said Shawcross. “It’s the kind of match I like: he’s old school, in your face and tries to bully you. He’s always on the line, but you have to stand up and be tough to beat.”
The fact that the forward resorted to suggesting that the Stoke captain’s body odor was putting him off of his game typified the extent to which even the standards of Costa’s provocation techniques appear to have declined, something which Mrs. Shawcross made light of on social media.
Made sure @Ryanshawy put his deodorant on this evening ??? pic.twitter.com/AyJfMi6BmG
— Kath Shawcross (@kathbuckley) November 7, 2015
But while the quality Costa’s performances have clearly fallen below par in the early stages of the season, his individual deterioration is perhaps more accurately understood as a symptom of a broader malaise engulfing Chelsea Football Club.
Before 2015/16, Mourinho had never lost more than six matches in a single league season. Eleven matchdays into the new campaign, however, he has already lost seven, and it is striking to observe the manner in which the 0-5 win at Swansea in January seemed to mark a transitional in the manager’s tactical outlook.
The Inquisitr observed that after the Swansea game, Chelsea had scored 52 goals in 23 league matches, six more than Manchester City (46) and 13 more than Arsenal (39). But by the end of the season, City had outscored Chelsea by 10 goals (83) and Arsenal had scored only two fewer than the league champions (71).
It is, thus, the case that the whole squad has been scoring less since the start of 2015, not just Costa, and his struggles embody that of a side that has lost its way under Mourinho.
Diego Costa already having a swipe at Ryan Shawcross. Is there something wrong with him? Can he not help himself?
— Phil McNulty (@philmcnulty) November 7, 2015
Chelsea won the 2015 Premier League title in the first half of the season when they scored freely, and players such as Costa, Eden Hazard, and Cesc Fabregas were free to combine creatively in attack. It was Mourinho’s reversion to his instinctive tactical conservatism, to always seek to preserve an advantage rather than expand it, that stymied this progress.
The club and Costa have not rediscovered their goalscoring touch since, and with Chelsea only three points outside the Premier League’s drop-zone, it is imperative that they do so quickly.
[Photo by Clive Rose / Getty Images]
