Sheva=flop?

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Why is Shevchenko struggling to adapt to the Premiership?

Is Chelsea's new boy simply past his best, or are there other reasons for his early-season troubles?

At first, it sounds like one of those ubiquitous and annoying riddles that actually has no answer. Marlon King can do it but Andriy Shevchenko can't. Mark Atkins could do it but Juan Veron couldn't. Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp couldn't do it for a couple of months but then did it brilliantly. Robert Pires took a season before he could do it. Shaun Goater did it from the off. Scandinavians generally do it much better than South Americans. What is it?

Hack life in the Premiership, that's what. Seeing a player as good as Shevchenko struggle so badly is startling and excruciating; while English football is clearly a genre unto itself, no genuinely world-class player should be unable to adapt. Yet the reality is that the purchase of foreign players is such an inexact science - even the master, Arsène Wenger, paid good money for the likes of Pascal Cygan, Kaba Diawara and Oleg Luzhny - that, to borrow from William Goldman's treatise on Hollywood, nobody knows anything: why Shevchenko is struggling, when his struggles will end, whether they will end, or why any world-class players would struggle in England. But here are six possible theories.

1. He just needs time

Arguably, it would be more of a surprise if Shevchenko didn't struggle initially. Most of the greatest foreign players have: Dennis Bergkamp did not score until his eighth game for Arsenal, Thierry Henry until his ninth, during which time both were ridiculed by the tabloids, while Eric Cantona was a bit-part player at Leeds for almost a year before moving across the Pennines to find his natural stage. Indeed, the irony of Shevchenko's woes being exacerbated by the blistering form of Didier Drogba, who for two seasons was apparently not cut out for the Premiership, will not be lost on Jose Mourinho. If the good will out, the great - and Shevchenko is certainly that - should have nothing to worry about.

He just needs time. Generally the chief strugglers have been the attackers. More universal footballers such as Claude Makelele, Gabriel Heinze, Sami Hyypia and Peter Schmeichel have found that their job descriptions have changed very little upon arrival in England. Attackers are different, and yet the perception remains that it is defences which need time to gel; that the back four is the great unrotatable of football. In reality it's the opposite: destruction is intrinsically easier than creation, and attacking players need just as much time as defenders to establish rhythms, connection, understanding.

2. He can't handle the muck and bullets

As Roy Keane said, in reference to Veron, the idea that world-class players cannot handle the "muck and bullets" of the Premiership is nonsense. The notion that English football is too fast, that foreigners don't like it up 'em, is a grotesque oversimplification borne of an almost colonial contempt. If it was as simple as that, England could pick the Watford team and rule the waves. The Premiership is certainly more robust than most leagues, and British beef is not to everyone's taste, but the success of pint-sized technicians like Juninho and Gianfranco Zola suggests it is a long way from being a determining factor. Besides, the likes of Paolo Montero were hardly treading on eggshells while trying to stop Shevchenko in his Serie A days.

3. It's all in his head

Many of the Premiership's greatest flops - Veron, Diego Forlan, Serhiy Rebrov, Albert Luque - have been meek, diffident characters; fairweather friends who squeeze tight to the smooth and recoil at the rough. The same can be said of José Antonio Reyes: he was not so much kicked out of football by the Neville brothers as kicked out of playing his normal game. As his ankles were bitten, so his toes stopped twinkling. Contrast that with Cristiano Ronaldo, who has the mental courage and self-belief to keep knocking at the door no matter how many times he is told where to go.

Reyes and Veron, like Ian Rush when he went to Italy, also exhibited classic symptoms of homesickness. Sometimes, playing football abroad really is like being in a foreign country. Or a player might suffer from personal problems - things which do not relate directly to the job but which impinge significantly upon it. Sometimes, it really can be something as ostensibly straightforward as that: sometimes, for no apparent reason, you get bad vibes which never quite go away. But the fact that Shevchenko, and his wife Kristen Pazik, has occupied as many column inches in the gossip sections of the tabloids as the sports pages suggests that life in London suits him just fine.

4. He is being misused tactically

There is significant precedent here: Veron was signed on a whim in 2001 by an excitable manager who suddenly had money to burn (Ferguson's principal target that summer was Patrick Vieira, an entirely different type of central midfielder) and many feel his failure was down to mismanagement. Hindsight shows he was a poor signing in the first place - United's orchestral midfield had room for only one conductor, the peerless Keane - and then, upon realizing that problem, Ferguson tried to get round it by shunting Veron onto the right of midfield.

In many senses, Veron was a Championship Manager purchase, bought for who he was and what he represented rather than after a conclusive analysis of how he might fit into the team. The same applies to Luque, Rebrov and Kleberson, who were all bought without a specific role in mind. Contrast that with Wenger, who watches players dozens and dozens of times to appraise exactly how they will fit into his team.

There are concerns that Shevchenko, like Veron, is in the wrong place at the right time; that he was bought on status, this time by an excitable owner with money to burn. At Milan he was drip-fed chances by a phalanx of seductively brilliant midfield craftsmen: Andrea Pirlo, Kaka, Clarence Seedorf, Rui Costa. At Chelsea he is more likely to be feeding off long passes from Frank Lampard and Michael Ballack or scavenging for knockdowns from Didier Drogba. Worse still, he is sometimes being used as the nominal wide-right in a 4-3-3 formation, as grotesque a misuse of a natural predator since Johan Cruyff tried to convert Gary Lineker into a total footballer by dumping him on the right wing at Barcelona in 1988.

5. He's out of form

Simple as that. Like Wayne Rooney, Shevchenko hasn't quite recovered from a pre-World Cup injury and his rust is compounding the inevitable teething problems of moving to a new culture, a new club and a new style of play. This is a man who scored 127 goals in 207 games in Serie A, the most sophisticated defensive institution in world football. Once he finds his form and rhythm, the Premiership should be easy pickings.

6. He's past it

Don't be silly.

Source: Guardian Unlimited
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/10/04/shevaending_story.html

Good read i thought.
Interesting comparison between Chelsea & Milans midfielders as well.
Although he'll still have his doubters and people on their high horses about how 'different' the Premiership is, and that only the best of the best survive, Henry this & that, another SeriaA flop, add generic misinformed/ignorent comment here, ect;

Wouldnt mind seeing some of the thoughts of some of the supporters of the teams mentioned in the article...
 
The games I've seen him in he's played quite well. It seems to me that people are making the assumption that because he isn't scoring he must be playing badly.
 
To be honest, other than the goal drought I think hes been playing well. Makes a lot of space for himself, and has good passing/creativity. Only needs a goal to help him out.
 
I don't think you can really compare the fact that Henry and Bergkamp didn't score for a while, Henry in particularly was in the Juve reserves and was converted to a new position, he wasn't a world class goalscorer in his prime when he came to the premiership.

Bergkamp has never been and out and out goalscorer either, and didn't hit his prime until 98.

Shevchenko on the other hand should be good enough to score goals from his first game, personally i think its due to chelsea's style of play, and not having a playmaker of Kaka's skill in their team, Ballack and Lampard are definitely not that sort of player.
 
7 games in to a season ffs, i wouldnt be surprised if he turns round and bangs in 20 goals this season
 
with regards to rooney, people know he can do it in the premiership, he just needs a goal and he'll be back to his best again no doubt.

As for shevchenko, like it said in the article he hasn't really got a flair/creative player behind him to make chances for him. Whether he adapts his game to this and comes deeper to collect the ball we'll have to see. Drogba can create opportunities for himself, and i dont think shevchenko can. It's still early days though, if he still hasn't done the business by xmas then thats when to really start worrrying. Chelsea are still missing Joe Cole so it'll be interesting how they change things when he comes back.
 
Ripper^ said:
Whether he adapts his game to this and comes deeper to collect the ball we'll have to see. Drogba can create opportunities for himself, and i dont think shevchenko can.
He managed with Kyiv, im sure he'll manage at Cheslea without a Kaka/RuiCosta type. ;)

I personally think that once he hits his first goal or two, that he'll start scoring for fun like he did at Milan. If he doesnt, then it doesnt really matter imo. He has nothing to prove over here.
 
Sheva will probably knock in a brace tonight and then go on to hit 3 figures for the season. We're due a loss and he's due a goal. :/
 
andybtsn said:
Yeah, I don't dare take him out of my fantasy footy teams, I know he'll hit top form soon.


why didnt morientes show his class as liverpool then? he had a full season to show what he could do, numerous starts by benitez but still couldnt score goals..
 
I just think he needs time to settle, some players need that. Others can achieve good form straightaway and hit the ground running so to speak. I think JohnnyG had a point before when he said that all the foreigners who have joined Chelsea recently have needed a year to settle, look at Essien and Drogba this year for instance.

Saying that, I still think he is overrated and always has been, thats not to say he's not world class but every time I've watched him, he's never done anything to warrant being the best striker living like I've heard people call him. :eek:
 
As a Chelsea Season Ticket holder I've pondered this a fair bit.
When we signed him I was mightily sceptical, I was very vocal at the time that I felt Drogba would score more goals this season and I stand by that statement, although I feel next season will be a far more even battle.
He's been fairly disappointing in all but the Villa match, but part of that is opposing managers being frightened of him and having him marked out of the game.
The upside of this is that Drogba is getting more space while Sheva draws defenders off him, this is one of the reasons Drogba is currently looking worthy of his £24mil price tag.
Sheva will come good, there's no doubt about it, until that happens though, I'm thoroughly enjoying watching Drogba show the world what I've known all along! :D
 
Linoge said:
Saying that, I still think he is overrated and always has been
That was what I thought when we bought him, but then someone gave me a link to this 10min montage on youtube, it really opened my eyes.
I can't look at youtube from work, so I can't fish out the vid for you, but have a search yourself, you'll soon see that there's much more to him than flashy goals alone.
 
He looks ok from what I've seen - which I agree is not an awful lot, but the lad is a class act and he'll come good for Chelsea, unfortunately.
 
The few times i've seen him for chelsea he has looked like he has a nice touch and made some very nice passes. He's also had a few good shots that on other days would have gone in. He'll do the business, might take a couple of months though.
 
CliffyG said:
The few times i've seen him for chelsea he has looked like he has a nice touch and made some very nice passes. He's also had a few good shots that on other days would have gone in. He'll do the business, might take a couple of months though.
Arsenal fans can sympathise with this more than most, I'm sure it was equally frustrating watching Bergkamp when he first arrived!
 
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