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Joe Cole believes Chelsea need to sign a dressing room leader such as Jordan Henderson in order to help Enzo Maresca’s young squad.
Chelsea appeared to be unlikely Premier League title challengers at the start of December but a run of five games without a win has seen Maresca’s side fall off the pace.
A 2-1 victory at home to West Ham on Monday evening has put Chelsea fourth in the Premier League, but questions have been raised over the squad’s lack of experience in their attempt to close the gap with Liverpool and Arsenal.
Cole, who won three Premier League titles during his time at Chelsea, agrees that Maresca’s needs more senior figures in his squad and feels it would help the development of the team’s younger players.
‘At the start of the season I thought it was a real mess because you had 30 players and there were a lot of lads who needed to get out the door, there was a lot of uncertainty,’ Cole told Premier League Productions.
‘Then Chelsea kept adding to the list and adding to the list, so I thought it would be so difficult for Enzo. Then we interviewed him early on in his reign and he was so calm about the process, he said, ‘I’m going to pick my players who I think can do what I need them to do and the ones that can’t can leave’. And he said it in such a way, so stern, but he believed it, I thought, ‘I like you’. He’s managed the group brilliantly.
‘There’s some players who have gone out the door this week and I think he’s just put a bit of steel into the side.
‘There are still bumps in the road, four or five weeks ago I thought Chelsea were in the title race because I’d been watching them consistently and it was improvement, improvement, improvement, then they had a three, four-week spell where they didn’t win a game, and in this league you can’t do that, you’ve got to be on it.
‘I’m impressed with him when I consider you have to take yourself back to what it was like in August, it looked incredibly mad and he just settled the ship, players have gone out again in January, the squad’s gone smaller but I think stronger.
‘I think the top four is well within their grasp, I think it’s something they should do given the amount of money they’ve spent. So I think he’s doing a very, very good job, and I think Champions League would be par for the course for this club this year.
‘I think he’s not got complete control of what he would like. Judging by how he’s managing players, I think he would like a bit of experience in that team, I think every football person would say, ‘I need a bit of experience in my squad to help me out’.
‘I think that’s a club policy, I understand from a club policy, when you’re thinking from a business perspective, you buy the best young players in the world at 18 to 22, you play those games, you develop them, they’re going to get better, whether they play for Chelsea, whether they become that player who takes you to the next level, or you sell them on, you’re going to make money.
‘But what I think they’re missing a trick with, and I think if you asked Enzo and he was honest, I think he would say, ‘I would like to have a slightly younger Thiago Silva, a Jordan Henderson, or a few players of that like who have been there, done it and can lead the group’.
‘Those sort of players, when we were young players, they were the ones who showed you the way, you learn just as much from them as you do the coaching staff by playing with them and seeing how they conduct themselves.’
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