Clarke: Every trophy is important
Chelsea’s assistant manager Steve Clarke has revealed the club is aiming to improve on last season’s trophy haul by winning all four major competitions this time around.
The Blues start their defence of the Carling Cup against Charlton at Stamford Bridge and Clarke insists they will be taking the competition just as seriously as they did last season.
The former Chelsea player, now one of coach Jose Mourinho’s valued assistants, admits they will make changes for the visit of the club currently standing nine points behind them in the Barclays Premiership.
When Mourinho first arrived at Chelsea before the start of last season, he told the players he wanted to win every major coition.
His talented and expensive squad achieved a 50% return for the Portuguese coach with just the Champions League and FA Cup eluding them.
This season the challenge to win an unprecedented four trophies in one season remains just as high on their agenda.
“If a trophy is there to be won, then we are trying to win it,” confirmed Clarke. “We will take the Carling Cup as seriously as we did last season and obviously we went all the way and won it.
“It is an important competition and one of the trophies there to be won. We showed our intent last year to get a trophy in the early part of the season. The competition has become more significant over the last two or three years.
“Teams now realise it is difficult to win any trophy so to target one particular trophy is not the way to do it. You have to target all four and see how many you end up with.”
However, while Clarke insists they will be trying to win them all, he does not believe winning the Carling Cup will be as significant as it was to the club last term.
It was, he admits, important for Chelsea to have won a trophy in Mourinho’s first season in order to demonstrate to the rest of the Premiership that they were going to be a force to be reckoned with.
“Last year the competition was even more significant than this season,” he admits. “We had not won a trophy as a club since 2000 and it was a chance for us to put down our marker early in the season.
"It was a chance for us to say: ‘We’re in the competitions and we are trying to win them. This is the first one available to us and we’ve won it.'
“It was also good for the confidence of the players to go on and finish the job in the Premiership.”
Chelsea are likely to make a number of changes against Charlton with defender Wayne Bridge back in the squad for the first time since breaking his ankle against Newcastle in the FA Cup last season.
But Clarke does not believe changing various personnel weakens their team because of the strength in depth they possess in every position.
“When you have got the squad we’ve got you can make changes without significantly weakening the team,” he boasted.
“The longer you stay in the more you can use the squad players. We can rotate the front three constantly for example. You would not know which is meant to be first three and we can do that throughout the team.
“At the weekend defender Robert Huth came in against Everton instead of Ricardo Carvalho and had a tremendous game. He hadn’t been involved for a long time but he played as though he hadn’t been out the team at all.
“That’s a sign of how strong the group is and the boys who are not in the team on a regular basis know that when they do go in, they don’t want to let the other players or the manager down. That’s a big part of the philosophy of the club.”
One of the main success of the season as been the form of Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba. After a difficult first season with injury, Drogba has been in top form with five goals to his name already in the Premiership.
Clarke said: “Last season it was difficult for him. It was his first season in a new country and people tend to forget that. It can take different characters time to adjust, it is a different type of football than he was used to in France.
“We were happy with him last season, we thought he did very well for us. He didn’t always get the praise he deserved from people outside the club. But the people within the club were happy with his contribution.
“He’s built on that and become even stronger this season but we expected that. He’s led the line very well. He’s physical and difficult to play against.”
