FanPost

What next for Oscar

Warren Little

I was at the Juventus blog and I found their article on predicting Carlos Tevez' season ahead brilliant. It was an intriguing idea and I instantly thought to translate that to Chelsea. The first person that comes to mind is Oscar: He's unbelievably unpredictable, there are tons of players with whom you know exactly how they're going to perform - Terry, Hazard, Torres, Azpi, Filipe Luis, Matic, Fabregas, Mikel, Costa - and then you have some guys who it's tough to predict how well they will do; what sort of role they have like Oscar, Drogba or Salah.

Oscar though, probably has the most important role on that 3 man list. He was made the most important player last year only to be upstaged by Hazard and now has a world class player - a genuinely top 10 in his position - to compete with in Fabregas. So, it made for an intriguing thought process to realize just how important Oscar will be this season.

Oscar is at a crossroads in his long term career and legacy. When we will look back on Oscar in 10 years: will we remember him as the player he could have been and who became a workhorse or the player who showed inconsistency before becoming a Ballon d'Or contendor as the best offensive force in the world.

LAST SEASON

By making him the number 10 ahead of Mata, we expected that he would replace the one man creative magic that Mata brought. He was scoring quite a bit in the early stretch of the season but he wasn't able to replace the magic that Mata had. The ability to win games singlehandedly. He brought other things to the number 10 role that Mata lacked but the things that Mata did when we had the ball: the outrageous technique; the ability to spray the ball out wide or find a thread of the needle pass or even the beautiful goals. Those edge-of-your-seat moments were not shown by Oscar.

FROM AN ATTACKING PERSPECTIVE

One on hand, Oscar has the talent to establish himself as the centre-piece attacking talent of the team. We've seen his silky smooth technique and incredible ability on occassion. Namely that draw against Juventus. However, Oscar's never shown the consistency to go with the attacking talent. We've never had a top drawer game from him where every touch he has creates something.

The type of outstanding performance throughout a game that we saw so often from Mata or Hazard this past season. So maybe he can establish himself and is able to draw out all of his attacking potential. He becomes the best number 10 in the league by attempting a lot more through balls, diagonal long passes and taking on players.

'FAR FROM THE SPOTLIGHT' TYPE ROLE

Or, Oscar gets type cast as the hard working number 10. The guy who does the metaphorical donkey work. He's in the team to prevent other teams from playing out the back and lets the more illustrious players like Hazard or Willian take all the glory. It would provide a much needed balance to the team.

Giving fuel to this argument is the signing of Fabregas; Fabregas is a much more flashy number 10 who takes a lot more risks than Oscar. It would make sense to have two very different types of number 10s in the squad.

An interesting comparison can be made with Steven Davis of Southampton. I happened upon an intriguing analysis of Steven Davis' role in a great article on Erik Lamela by Jake Meador

"Steven Davis - the name everyone forgets from Southampton's front four - would play as a utility man, helping with the aggressive pressing Pochettino requires of his front men and constantly moving around the field to offer short, easy passes to his teammates. He didn't rack up major stats, but his influence was massive. "

Basically, Steven Davis allowed Lallana, Lambert and Jay Rodriguez to flourish by providing necessary balance. He was the hardest worker without the ball and in possession kept the attack flowing rather than take all the focus on himself. A very different approach to most players playing as number 10s. This is how I saw Oscar last season.

MANAGER'S INFLUENCE

Mourinho's role is very important in how Oscar will set up this season. It could be that Mourinho simply likes having a hard pressing number 10 and will not try to change the system to unleash a more creative Oscar.

Or that Mourinho was trying to see if Oscar could provide a balance in providing both hard work and high-stakes attacking and it became apparent quickly that Oscar could not do both.

CONCLUSION

With all that in mind, I think Oscar's going to become the underrated but very important player, akin to Mikel. We have Hazard to provide inspiration, a much better striker in Diego Costa who can make the most out of the quarter chances and if we needed a riskier number 10 we can just play Hazard or Fabregas there. Mourinho clearly enjoys having a player like Oscar who can provide the balance to the squad. He once claimed that Oscar had such a great engine on him that he could press a pivot pair all by himself.

In our counter attacking system a guy like Oscar is incredibly important. In possession he'll be the player who'll provide the easy and simplistic pass. Make himself available for a pass and keep the attack moving with a side or back pass, he's not the flashy type of number 10 to take a lot of risks. Stereotypical stuff like try a flick, dribble - beat a player and put in a beautiful through ball - the kind of the player we instantly think of when we think of number 10s.

Maybe Oscar will prove me wrong and turn out to be the go to guy for the team or he'll play to type by doing exactly what he did last season. Either way, expect Oscar to be important.

This is my first blogpost and any constructive criticism (style, flow, matter) would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any sort of approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions held by the editors of this site.