Attack: On fire at the beginning of the season, Chelsea lost their way with Frank Lampard's injury followed by Didier Drogba's prolonged battle against malaria. Of course, luck has played a part as well, as Chelsea went from freakishly lucky in converting chance into goals in August/September to freakishly unlucky later in the season (I had a cool graph demonstrating this, but my computer died. So imagine a cool graph that's really convincing or something). It's tempting to blame everything on the players, but random, dumb luck has had a huge part to place in the attack misfiring - which isn't to say that they weren't much better with a fit Lampard and Drogba. Blistering start followed by injuries, disease, uninspired play, and miserable luck. C+
Defence: Unfortunately for the Blues as of late, the fortunes of their defence mirrored their attacking play. Impenetrable through the first few games, injuries to the centrebacks and sloppy play in midfield have led to the Blues becoming something of a goal sieve over recent weeks - shipping three at home to Sunderland indicates that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong somewhere down the line (magic eight-ball says: Signs point to Ferreira). With the first-choice back line fit, this is an extremely solid defensive unit. The only problem is that that's happened all of once(?) so far this season. Ups and downs is an understatement, and the obvious depth problems from the summer bore fruit in the autumn. C
Management: Oh boy. I think Carlo Ancelotti has done a decent job, by and large. There's only so far he can go without Chelsea's top players and he hasn't done anything massively deranged in a game that's mattered. He's not good at trusting the kids, but he sees them more than we do, so he's in possession of more information than a gang of fans who may or may not be mildly obsessed with Josh McEachran. Ray Wilkins' rather bizarre dismissal can't have helped much, though I doubt it was overly harmful either. Hasn't made things actively worse, but hasn't done much to make them better. C
Individual Grades: Forwards | Midfielders | Defenders | Goalkeepers
Team: I'm going to go with a straight C here, although I'm tempted to bump it up to C+ in acknowledgment of the fact that my goodness we've had a lot of bad luck. What do you think?