Fallen giants: Why Chelsea and Manchester United face a pivotal summer in bid to return to top

Sunday sees what in recent years has always been one of the biggest games of the season, as Chelsea host Manchester United at Stamford Bridge.

Both sides have had disappointing campaigns to date – although United fans, frustrated by the travails of Louis van Gaal’s goal-shy side, would perhaps do well to remember they would not swap their season for that of the Blues – although there have been some subtle signs of improvement in recent weeks. Nevertheless, what was once a guaranteed top-of-the-table clash has turned into something of a peripheral meeting.

Chelsea, resigned to a lost year in domestic terms, have nothing to play for other than the prospect of spoiling opponents’ plans; United, struggling for consistency, will feel other games will be more instrumental in deciding if they finish in the top four.

If fans of both clubs can begrudgingly accept that this season will not deliver what they demand – a title challenge – then they at least want to know that next season will be different, that Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City will not get a free run at the title and that Arsenal and Tottenham – previously hanging to the coattails of their rivals – will be confined to such a role once again.

With questions lingering over the state of both clubs – including their managers, and the strength of the playing squad – such a resurgence is by no means guaranteed.

Sunday’s meeting comes too soon, but what do both clubs need to address in order to become genuine contenders once again?

With 14 games left in the season (or 37% still to go, for the percentage-based stats fans out there), Manchester United currently sit fifth, five points off fourth on 40 points, while Chelsea are a lowly 13th, with 29 points to their credit so far.

Considering their abject start to the season, which saw the Blues reach Christmas with 18 points from 17 games, the Blues have stepped up a bit recently – with their form such that finishing seventh (they are currently five points behind Southampton, who hold that spot now) should be a realistic prospect. The midweek 0-0 draw with Watford highlighted a major problem, however: for Chelsea, a team accustomed to success, seventh is barely any more rewarding than 12th. Will they continue to be motivated to perform for these relatively meaningless matches, especially against opponents who will be scrapping for their lives?

Manchester United’s future is harder to offer any confident prognostications about, although the impressive nature of the 3-0 win over Stoke City on Tuesday should perhaps not distract from the fact Van Gaal’s side do not appear to be as good as any of the four sides currently above them, and are therefore unlikely to close the five-point gap that currently exists between them and the two north London sides.

Major questions would be asked if they failed to finish above the team currently directly beneath them - West Ham – so a fifth-placed finish would seem a highly probable result. As with Chelsea, that is not something the fans or the board would be particularly pleased with. But the difference between United and Chelsea's finishing positions may end up being much smaller than many might think.

So what is the underlying cause behind such underachievement? For Chelsea that is relatively simple to explain, with the fallout from Jose Mourinho’s divisive final months in charge having a hangover effect on the club’s current form. Guus Hiddink has come in and improved things to an extent - they are unbeaten since he took over, if not exactly win-crazy - but the whole situation with John Terry’s contract is perhaps the obvious manifestation of a situation (player unrest, loss of motivation, loss of confidence) that will only be rectified when a new manager is appointed.

The cup competitions, particularly the Champions League, remain the one shining light for the club, and you would expect them to offer more sparkling performances in those games than the league. Whether that will be enough for one of these creaking giants to win either of them, however, is hard to be confident of.

For United, in some ways the scenario is more alarming. Louis van Gaal is now over 18 months into his tenure at Old Trafford, the period in a managerial stint where – if it is to be a success – the squad tends to solidify into something stable and impressive. This is what seems to be happening at Spurs, for example (Mauricio Pochettino having arrived the same summer), yet United remain devoid of creativity and confidence in the final third at the moment. They have reams of possession, particularly at home, but are translating that dominance into a whole lot of nothing much.

If we assume that the recent win over Stoke is an aberration rather than the new normal, then it paints a worrying picture for the future. Van Gaal will point to some mitigating circumstances, of course: injuries have regularly derailed his plans, while crucial players seem to have lost form this season. The club spent significantly in the summer, but most of those signings are still adjusting (Bastian Schweinsteiger and Memphis Depay have disappointed, Anthony Martial has occasionally been brilliant but always inconsistent).

That may change next season, but you wonder if the club will start to look more closely at what they can do to help new signings integrate faster into the squad.

There has been a certain hysterical assessment of the Chelsea squad in recent weeks, with the club’s continued poor league form leading many to claim that it needs strengthening all over the pitch. But that is clearly an exaggeration – it should not be forgotten that essentially the same squad won the Premier League only seven months or so ago, and did so in pretty convincing fashion.

An elite squad always needs a certain amount of overhaul, but if the new Premier League season started tomorrow you would not rule the Blues out of the title conversation that quickly.

The most glaring weakness in the current roster undoubtedly remains in attack, with back-up to Diego Costa (or a replacement, if rumours of his potential exit are reliable) desperately needed. If he can prove his fitness then January signing Alexandre Pato could yet have a role to play, but the side surely need someone more established if they are to worry their domestic rivals. Atletico Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann would be perfect in many ways, while you wonder if Gonzalo Higuain’s recent form has got the suits at Stamford Bridge debating whether the 28-year-old is worth a shot.

The other area of real concern is at the back, where club captain John Terry might leave and long-time partner Gary Cahill remains concerned about his playing time. If one or both left then the Blues would undoubtedly need to find a replacement, with January signing Matt Miazga nowhere near ready to step in alongside Kurt Zouma. Finding such a player – Aymeric Laporte? John Stones? – could be an expensive and arduous process, however, and would still not replace the huge loss of leadership that losing Terry (or, to an only slightly lesser extent, Cahill) would cause.

Elsewhere issues are less pressing. If Baba Rahman cannot turn it around then another left-back deputy for Cesar Azpilicueta will be needed, while a right-back to really challenge Branislav Ivanovic would solidify a problem position. A box-to-box midfielder would similarly strengthen the squad overall, but that addition and any others might depend on who is sold, with the club seemingly eager to remain self-sufficient.

What is intriguing, and will also be the case when we get to the managers, is that Manchester United are likely to be shopping in the same sort of markets, and therefore for the same sort of players. Someone like Gareth Bale or Cristiano Ronaldo (or Neymar) remains the dream acquisition, but it remains extremely doubtful that any of those will be moving this summer.

Beyond that the Red Devils' shopping list should look the same as Chelsea's. They need a striker to take the burden off Wayne Rooney (finally replacing Robin van Persie), at least one central defender to firm up the backline and then both a right-back (Matteo Darmian is still to convince) and ball-winning central midfielder to add new dimensions to a squad that has looked both threadbare and lightweight on occasions this season.

Both clubs have the financial muscle to fill all those spots, but the nature of the modern transfer market means only a finite number of suitable players will be available this summer. It seems almost certain that the two clubs will square off over at least one target (with Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal probably also involved – another reason why United would love the additional carrot of Champions League football to make their case more compelling.

We know that Chelsea are looking for a new manager to take over from this summer, while we can only speculate that Manchester United will be too. Van Gaal might have an additional year on his contract but, prior to the win over Stoke at least, it seemed unthinkable that he would actually see that out. If they don’t finish in the top four, as they probably won’t, then you assume the Dutchman’s contract has a severance clause that United might well exercise.

If both clubs are indeed in the market for a new manager, then that is when things get interesting. The one manager Chelsea definitely won’t appoint, Jose Mourinho, is the clear favourite for the United role – but if United disappoint the Special One again then it seems likely both clubs will be pursuing the same candidates: Most obviously Manuel Pellegrini, Diego Simeone and Mauricio Pochettino.

For United, the Mourinho decision feels almost pivotal in their mid-term future, an appointment that will speak to their wider approach. If the Portuguese arrives at Old Trafford then it will naturally be seen as a reactive move, a response to Van Gaal’s troubles and City’s seismic capture of Pep Guardiola (Mourinho, rightly or wrongly, is seen as the most likely man to cook up the Kryptonite needed to bring down the Superman that is Guardiola).

But recent history underlines the poor shape Mourinho tends to leave clubs in: his methods engineer success in the short-term, but leave a mess at some point down the line, something that invariably needs extensive clean-up. Appointing Mourinho would perhaps be a short-term salve to United’s sores, then, but at the risk of creating bigger fissures in two or three years’ time.

Other appointments come with less of a prospect of that, albeit without the same confidence of short-term results (Mourinho has pretty much never failed in that regard). Simeone would be an impressive hire, but would his intense methods work in England – and would the current United squad need a massive overhaul to fully implement them? Pellegrini has shown he can manage big egos and deliver a certain stable success, but do the club really want to appoint a City cast-off - especially one who has proven unable to motivate a title-winning side into retaining its top dog status?

United chief executive Ed Woodward has received a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. Given that, and his general modus operandi, it seems highly unlikely he would risk the second-guessing and consternation that would come with hiring a candidate with anything other than a proven record – a reason why Borussia Dortmund’s Thomas Tuchel, for example, will surely not be considered.

Pochettino and Koeman, given their Premier League success, are appointments that could perhaps be sold to the fans – along with names with European league titles on their CV like Antonio Conte and Laurent Blanc. But it nonetheless remains a small pool that the club are fishing in, another reason they should curse themselves for allowing City to outmanoeuvre them in the pursuit of Guardiola.

Chelsea are in a similar position, albeit with a board less sensitive to the thoughts and demands of the fans (Tuchel, while an outsider, may at least be assessed). The big advantage they have is that they are looking for a manager now, that they can put the groundwork in on a new appointment while United are still debating whether or not they even have a managerial vacancy.

That alone makes them favourites for Pellegrini or Simeone (if the latter is even open to leaving Atletico, something which is far from guaranteed - though Chelsea would be the first to know). But it will be interesting to see whether Roman Abramovich tells his staff to look further afield, to try and identify ‘the next Mourinho’ rather than simply the available coach with the best reputation.

That approach did not exactly work with Andre Villas-Boas, but that is not to say it is an entirely flawed idea.

Beyond the personnel, it is evident that both sides need to find an “identity”, a style of play and approach that defines them as a club. United certainly seem to have lost one since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson, while Chelsea have often been so focused on first-team affairs in recent years that the rest of the club feels like it exists in a separate world.

Joining up the youth team with the first team at Cobham should be the priority for the Blues, helping the raft of talented young footballers that are on the books to actually progress into the first-team. That should surely be the cornerstone of any mandate given to the new manager.

For United – whose youth system woes are a problem that will need a vast, long-term overhaul to address - Van Gaal’s pragmatic approach seems to have delivered a possession-based style that has a certain promise to it, albeit one currently squandered by an utter lack of imagination and incision in the final third. This might not be much of a surprise to the club, who will have noted that Bayern Munich had appointed Van Gaal to steady the ship when the club went through a tough time; and once that had been achieved, they looked elsewhere to find a man to establish a real blueprint for the future.

The move to United has exposed Van Gaal as archaic in many of his methods, and that is the main reason there is almost no chance that he will see out the three-year contract he was given. The Dutchman has essentially reduced a misshapen United approach back to neutral, back to a square block of wood. It is another manager who will be asked to take that raw material and carve something beautiful.

United might have the better league position right now, but it is certainly possible to argue that it is Chelsea – and Sunday’s game might bear this out – who retain the better squad. They also have the better long-term situation, given they are already looking for a manager and can thus push themselves to the front of queue for any viable candidate.

Both clubs are dealing with a number of similar issues, however, and the success of their respective methods to address those problems will ultimately have a huge bearing on how prepared they will be to compete, domestically and in Europe, in the short-term.

Guardiola’s City are going to be a formidable new threat next season, while Arsenal figure to be as stable as ever and Tottenham should continue their upward curve. If Chelsea and United are to challenge those clubs then there are some glaring weaknesses they need to address – and really they need to start planning for that now.