Uninspiring Chelsea need a change…but will that leave them better off?

If someone didn’t watch Chelsea’s 1-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday afternoon and only saw the score they may have been forgiven for thinking the Blues kept things respectful.

After all, this is a City side that is waltzing to the title with such ease it’s making a mockery of those who jeered Pep Guardiola after a difficult first season in England.

However if you catch even the briefest of highlights it will quickly become clear that whilst Guardiola has learnt from last season and strengthened his position, his opposite number Antonio Conte has regressed at an alarming rate.

Lest we forget this was a team that had finished had finished a miserable 10th the season before, following the implosion under Jose Mourinho. The way Conte dragged the team up and restored them as champions was remarkable, not least of all because of the aggressive spending from the two Manchester clubs.

Yet perhaps this is where an ageing Chelsea team is right now. Perhaps last season was the anomaly and in actual fact they are not a team who should be capable of challenging for the title. There are a lot of new faces from the team that won the league in 2015 and of course this season the players have had to cope with the additional burden of European fixtures; not an easy task when faced with Conte’s intense training methods.

Conte himself is a long way away from the peak of his powers. Plenty of his decisions recently have been strange, such as his insistence at using Eden Hazard as a false nine despite his star player’s public admission he prefers to play out on the left.

Even on Sunday he said that he felt Pedro and Willian, who played either side of Hazard, played “a fantastic game”. This despite Pedro being slammed by pretty much every observer as he couldn’t keep hold of the ball and when he did he gave it away immediately. While this was occurring Olivier Giroud and Alvaro Morata were sat on the bench, the former not coming on until the 78th minute and the latter just over ten minutes later.

When asked about his tactics Conte hit back at Sky's pundits, pointing how they hounded Arsene Wenger when City beat them 3-0. A fair response but one that itself deserves scrutiny. This was a City team who looked a little jaded after an intense week, they were there to be challenged, to be pressed. Chelsea's lacklustre, pedestrian approach made it too easy for City.

Conte should not shoulder all of the blame however. The club’s transfer policy that sees talented academy players allowed to leave whilst expensive and average replacements are brought in is baffling to say the least but there is something more.

Chelsea as a club is a strange old place. It is a club that has won two Premier League titles in the last four years. In the past decade only Manchester United can match its trophy haul (although Manchester City should soon overtake that) yet the club never seems able to shake off the feeling it is one bad spell away from yet another crisis.

It's a club that seems to break managers. Long-termism is a rare thing in football nowadays but even by today’s modern standards Chelsea are a revolving door that takes some beating. Conte is the club’s 11th different manager under Roman Abramovich, and that includes two separate spells for Mourinho and Guus Hiddink. If, as expected, he leaves this summer Chelsea will need a 12th body to take charge, unless Carlo Ancelotti completes an emotional and surprise return.

And, if the Chelsea paradox continues as is, the club will probably win the title despite this instability. This is the eternal dilemma for Chelsea fans; success appears constant under Abramovich and his trusted lieutenant Marina Granovskaia, but at what cost?

The supporters are still being denied that elusive player to come through the academy and become a regular fixture in the first-team, despite continued success at youth level. And the toxicity that can follow the club ends up dividing the fan base.

For whatever reason this summer feels particularly pivotal. The club is in a delicate situation with the new contracts for Hazard and Thibaut Courtois still unsigned. Two of this season’s better performers; Willian and Cesar Azpilicueta are about to enter the final 24 months of their deals and all of a sudden the future could look a little uncertain.

Chelsea need a clear direction. The club needs to lay out its plans for the next five or ten years. Their needs to be a plan put in place to start bringing through more young players and a new spine needs to be established following the departures of that legendary core that brought so much success.

Courtois, Azpilicueta, N’Golo Kante, Hazard and Morata are all either in or entering their prime. That’s a group that most teams in the world would love to build around. Bring back the likes of Drogba, Lampard and Terry to both keep a link to the past and encourage their own development as coaches. Bring through some younger, hungrier players to put pressure on the older heads and appoint a manager who knows he will be given four or five years to build something.

Conte never felt like a long-term appointment, and the way some of the players were walking around when they were only 1-0 down on Sunday would make it appear as if they know it. Perhaps he is merely paying the price for a failure to live up to the club's demanding expectations in the Premier League's most competitive era but the meek surrender Chelsea presented on Sunday hinted at something more. The Blues have a squad that should be capable of more, despite some issues. Manchester City and Guardiola have set a new standard and even though they are some way off the pace Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool have both an obvious identity and a clear structure. Chelsea have a lot to get right this summer, but if they do, it could finally give the club what has been lacking since Abramovich first took charge.