John Obi Mikel: Jose Mourinho's trusty totem

Facing a mini crisis, and a fading title challenge, the Chelsea boss turned to the Nigeria international

There is nothing like trauma to set the mind back to its most simplistic, default setting. After enduring his worst-ever points haul after four games in a league season, Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho – the arch defensive strategist - reverted to his staple for the trip to Goodison Park. Super Eagles midfielder John Obi Mikel was named in the starting line-up for the first time this season, alongside the ever-present Nemanja Matic.

Mourinho’s lapse to the familiar ultimately failed to stem the tide of despair that threatens to submerge Stamford Bridge. The champions were laid bare in the most basic ways imaginable—there was no grand tactical design by Roberto Martinez; indeed, it took the sort of freak incident that cannot be envisaged to really turn the game.
However, the Special One’s decision to turn to Mikel may have been about more than just going back to basics.

The two-time Champions League winner, for the second time in his career, faces a crisis of trust. His falling out and subsequent dismissal at Real Madrid, complete with his treatment of legendary goalkeeper Iker Casillas, remains fresh in the mind.
At Chelsea though, he faces an altogether different scenario. The structures and tenets that have, over the years, come to embody his creations seem to have deserted him, and often he cuts a picture of genuine bewilderment on the touchline.
Barely rousing his usual spikiness at perceived injustices, seemingly reluctant to make the sort of brave strategic shifts on which his genius mind was affirmed, Mourinho looks like a man with a lot of self-examination to do.

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His best teams have been built on an unshakable certitude in their own abilities, knit together by siege mentality, and coated with a thin veneer of razzle dazzle. In many ways, this Chelsea, with Eden Hazard and Cesc Fabregas, has almost too much glitter; though the Spaniard has lost some of his lustre since the turn of the year, and Hazard himself has been in a funk since the summer, the swagger of last season almost sepia-tinted in the mind as the leaves begin to turn.

With no certitude, and no splish-splash of stardust, what Mourinho has left is the gluey resin that bound his unstoppable champions last season. However much he has sought to rouse that us-against-the-world mentality, to introduce the sort of tetchiness that would shake his team out of this daze, the results have been less than satisfactory.

His defence, led by captain John Terry - imperious last term - looks like it’s populated by match-stick men. An uncompromising midfield shield in Nemanja Matic swings freely ajar; the snarling Diego Costa is now more bark than bite, and we have already touched on Hazard.

Heatmap

Nothing is the same. Except, of course, Mikel.
Besides Terry, the Nigeria international stands the longest-serving player in the squad. He was signed by the Portuguese manager, and is virtually a part of the furniture. It is to him that Mourinho has turned to once again: he needs a symbol of reliability, an anchor in the turbulence that has rumbles of 2007’s bitter divorce from Abramovich and his Blues dynasty.

In Christopher Nolan's hit movie 'Inception', the lead character possesses a spinning top, a 'totem' with which he can differentiate reality from dream states. With the surreality of a crumbling empire around him in so short a time, Mikel is Jose Mourinho's totem.

Mikel | Part of the furniture at Stamford Bridge

Whether the 28-year-old midfielder provided enough reassurances to set his manager’s mind at the rest is debatable. In many ways, his performance was classic Mikel: tidy and composed, but short of the snarl and snap with which Matic patrolled the front of the Chelsea defence almost single-handedly last season. A near-perfect pass accuracy, mostly over short distances, is hardly the hallmark of urgency.

Then again, maybe it is exactly what Mourinho needed to see: one of his team of champions offering a typical, quintessential performance—not the frenzied haste in which more of the crockery might be broken. It is a sort of comfort to know that while the rest of the side seems to have assumed alternate identities, Mikel remains indubitably himself and little more.
In any case, his exit from the game coincided with the disintegration of the Blues in midfield, and the score could really have been much worse had Romelu Lukaku remembered how to finish. Make of that what you will.

Epl 02:56