Premier League preview No5: Chelsea | Dominic Fifield

Aa André Villas-Boas know you're under pressure at Stamford Bridge

forecast : 3rd (This is not the prediction Fifield Sunday, but the average of our writers writers tips Guardian)

position last season

: 2 º

chances of winning the league

: 2.5

was Marcel Desailly, who summarized the task facing Andre Villas-Boas more succinctly. "All the pressure is on the shoulders of the coach," said the former captain of Chelsea. "Everything depends on him." The Portuguese, at 33, back to Stamford Bridge this summer with only 20 months experience in management behind him, accused of succeeding where he had seen a recent double winning coach had failed. He said a lot of Villas-Boas innate self-confidence that has been immersed in his new role with gusto.

• rookie with the registry - the Europa League, National League championship in a canter and a Cup of Portugal were requested in all its isolation campaign in Porto - will not escape the attention as a campaign Chelsea Premier League starts, but the pressure coupled with its new role embraced. Villas-Boas, a manager who has absorbed the knowledge imparted by Sir Bobby Robson, Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, has only been a success. He has never tried anything else. He can preach the power of the collective, but theirs is a strong belief that their own football philosophy can boost this team.
Indeed, it must do. Villas-Boas is the only factor at present in which Chelsea can put all their hopes to transform last season's relative underperformance to win titles and European contenders again. The club will try to be active in the transfer market before the end of the month, and much may depend on the success of their search for playmaker Luka Modric of Tottenham Hotspur, but today is a set of team that is committed and the family. Short-termism on the bench has led to the virtual inertia when it comes to the review team. In essence, based on the same names, trying to enjoy the same advantages, but they are also sensitive to the same weaknesses.

These players have won great reputation, but also a group that has claimed the Premier League only once since the second season of Mourinho at the club, and not as rivals for the Champions League with faded Carlo Ancelotti. In the last quarter of the fall sad midseason was a profound shock, with the Italian did not recover to their inability to arrest the decline until the actual damage had been done. Roman Abramovich does not update to fail, and the reaction of some perplexity, the management of the crisis was not likely to be tolerated. Elimination of Europe rather than sealed the fate of Ancelotti.

These same players remain, making it inevitable fears of a repetition. Logic suggested that summer was an opportunity to renew, the new director might try to restructure and modernize. Instead, you chose to keep the faith, or perhaps more realistic, while recognizing the practical aspects that hinder efforts to reinvent Chelsea. The best players on wages are important, limiting the number of applicants able to attract them away.

Anzhi Makhachkala Russia Yuri Zhirkov make an exception - to return home to a club money flushed able to pay their salaries. Others, such as Jose Bosingwa and Paulo Ferreira, can not be changed. Nicolas Anelka, too, chose to see the final year of his contract and leave for nothing next summer instead of transferring now. Rule 25 players in team Premier League, and a reluctance to keep players that can not be used, defined the strategy of the club: waste of money, to date, was limited to January

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