Villas Boas has a big rebuilding job on his hands

Andre Villas Boas could hardly refuse an offer like Chelsea, but what appears to be a very attractive position could prove very challenging, even for somebody of his considerable talents.

Chelsea stagnated alarmingly last season. They started the season in blistering form, destroying anybody that crossed their path, but once they lost Frank Lampard to injury, it exposed frailties in Chelsea's squad not seen for years.

Their play became sluggish and predictable, Drogba and Anelka's goals dried up, £50million man Fernando Torres' goals never even came. The case for the defence of Chelsea was, well, their defence. They had the joint best defensive record with Manchester City last season but it still was not quite as convincing as in their Premier League winning seasons.


Chelsea's squad is an aging squad, and has been for some time. This must be the biggest concern for the new manager. Perhaps that was a reason for hiring the previous manager, Carlo Ancelotti. He does, afterall, have a proven track record with more experienced players and he has handled the big egos, but maybe now it has got to the point where the over 30s struggle to cope with the pace of the Premier League.

Looking over the current Chelsea squad there is a staggering number of player aged 30 or more. Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, Yossi Benayoun, Didier Drogba, Florent Malouda, Paulo Ferreira, John Terry and Nicholas Anelka to name them.

This is in stark contrast to Sir Alex Ferguson's youth movement at Manchester United, which won them the Premier League and took them all the way to the Champions League final against Barcelona.

Andre Villas-Boas has enjoyed immense success for such a young manager, winning the Portuguese league, cup, supercup and the Europa League last season in his first season as Porto manager.

Roman Abramovich was sufficiently impressed to pay Porto over £13million of his fortune to acquire his second Portguese manager, now he must be similarly generous to ensure his team are not completely left behind by United and possibly Manchester City with whom they finished level on points last season.

In buying Ashley Young, Phil Jones and David De Gea, United have spent well so far this summer; buying young (pardon the pun), hungry players for the future, but who can also make a solid contribution straight away. City are actively persuing Sergio Aguero and Samir Nasri to bolster their attack and compliment their already solid defence.

So where do Chelsea start? For years Chelsea have played to the strengths of Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba, playing a slow, possession game and overpowering their opponents. Both of these players are now 33, how much longer can Chelsea play like this?

The signings of Ramires, Torres, Benayoun and Luiz suggest perhaps a change from the typical Chelsea we've seen since Jose Mourinho left. These are smaller, more mobile players and perhaps there have been long term plans to change the way Chelsea play.


Certainly, Ramires and Torres suit a faster style of play in order to exploit their pace. Chelsea's slow style of play keeps opposition teams camped in their own half, which is fine with a striker like Drogba who can bully defenders. Torres, while not physically weak, is not capable of replicating Drogba's style. To get the best out of Torres he needs to be put in behinds defences to show his pace and finishing ability, he cannot do this when defences are given the chance to retreat to a deeper line.

Nicholas Anelka had been the main outlet of pace in the Chelsea squad but his role in the team has diminished due to a lack of playing time in his true position as well as simply aging, he won't keep his pace forever.

The over 30s will soon need replacing and a new philosophy of football is necessary to get the best out of the younger players at the club. Andre Villas-Boas is a young manager with fresh ideas and isknown to favour attacking football which can only be beneficial for the likes of Josh McEachran, Ramires, Torres and the probable entrant, Luka Modric.

The real challenge for Villas-Boas is keeping Chelsea at the top while rebuilding a team that requires new blood.

Mario Balotelli - In defence of an idiot

On Sunday, an atrocity against football was committed.

Sometime in the afternoon heat of Los Angeles, a footballer dared to showboat. This deplorable act had dire, hilarious and, for some reason, very angry consequences.

Fortunately, for those who like to watch professional sports people make tools of themselves, Mario Balotelli's chucklesome gaff was captured on television for posterity.

As well as serving as the latest chapter in the Italian's comicbook account of his City career, this bungled piece of buffoonery was the trigger for all kinds of scorn to be poured upon the striker.

Since joining Manchester City, Mario Balotelli has had a, erm, mixed time of things. In his 12 months in the North-West, he has thrown darts at a youth teamer (for a laugh), single-handedly stopped a child from being bullied, wrestled with a plastic bib and given away thousands of pounds to a tramp.

Compared to those escapades, fluffing a back-hell is probably the least controversial thing he's done. Well, you'd think so. Apparently not.

Moments after the miss, Roberto Mancini substituted the striker and the two shared a heated exchange of words. The anger didn't stay between these two, either, Twitter was soon abuzz with words like 'disrespectful', 'unprofessional' and 'disgrace'.

'Idiot' would have sufficed.

Had he scored, or maybe even if it wasn't one of football's biggest nut-jobs, there's probable doubt that these words would have been reeled off. Certainly, had it gone in, the superlatives may well have been in free-flow.

Instead, though, he missed, looked a fool, everybody laughed and the clip will be on something like 'Danny Dyer's Pwoppa Nawtie Footie Fowl Aaps' and that's how it should have stayed.

The fuss would've been understandable had it been in a competitive game, like Robbie Keane's abomination of a fancy flick ( go to 3.20), in the Champions League, Djimi Traore's effort of a Zidane drag-back or David Dunn's derby day hilarities.

Instead, it was in a friendly. A friendly. You know, those unimportant games which are usually devoid of entertainment? Well Balotelli tried a trick to entertain. Yes, he messed it up, but it was entertaining.

If outlandish attempts at pointless tricks are that bad and are a blight on the game, maybe we should start a campaign, Father Ted style?

DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING! And this. And this. And especially this.

Imagine football without this type of disrespectful play. A joyous game full of Kevin Davieses, Dirk Kuyts, Darren Fletchers and Gareth Barrys.

Dedicated. Committed. Functional. Boring.

Strip-tease

The close season is a dull time for a football fan. Saturdays drift by aimlessly, and it's only around now, with the minor consolation of pre-season friendlies getting underway, that there's any relief from an otherwise dreadful summer of drizzle, golf and the Women's World Cup.

The only thing that's kept me going is the steady stream of new kits being revealed, something I've kept on top of thanks to Football-Shirts.co.uk. Now, the issue of new home, away, 3rd, and sometimes even 4th (not to mention European home and away) kits being replaced every season is a rant in itself, and one I won't get into for now.

Because I wanted to focus on the kits themselves. If you sift through the standard, bland and oft-recycled Nike and Adidas templates, and try to kid yourself that Umbro's featureless 'Tailored' range isn't just them running out of ideas rather than the PR excuse of wanting to celebrate [insert team name here]'s proud heritage, there's actually some cracking designs knocking around.



Wycombe's offering, in particular, is a belter, as Kappa show that you can actually do something interesting with a fairly restricting template of two-tone blue quarters, with their wobbly (and, let's be honest, comedy breasts lookalike) chest panels giving the shirt an nice little feature. That said, it does suffer from the age-old Kappa issues of a sponsor that's far too high, and those damn shoulder logos.

But where's the fun in looking at nice shirts? Like a club just before closing time, there's some absolute munters hanging around trying desperately to grab somebody's attention. And what better place to start than at the top of club football?



Grim. I've seen someone wearing this shirt around town (Preston must have a fledgling Catalan population) and it looks just as bad in real life. I can appreciate that Nike want to do something interesting and different with one of its biggest clients, but this? Really? When have asymmetrical stripes EVER looked good? In fact, I'm reminded of this:



Still, it could be worse. You could be a Gillingham fan, stuck with wearing this. At least it's only a third shirt, so hopefully for Gills' sake they won't have to look at it too often. And just in case you were wondering, the shorts are pink, too.

But before I go, spare a thought for goalkeepers. You'd think they'd be fairly safe from the atrocities afflicting their outfield team-mates, after all, shouldn't they just be stuck in a plain green shirt and left to it? Not if you're the England goalkeeper!



This is, quite possibly, the worst kit of any sort I've seen since, well, England's away goalkeeper kit from Euro 96. What, you don't remember? Well let me refresh your memory...



It looks like a parrot was sick on a rainbow. I remember laughing about this kit when I was 8 in the playground. It was even worse when it was what Seaman was wearing in that heart-wrenching shooting against the Germans. And now that memory has made me cry, I think it's an appropriate time to go.

But hang on. How can I possibly write a blog about bad football shirts, and even go so far as to mention goalkeepers, without this fella getting in on the action. Jorge Campos, we at Half Time Oranges salute you!