5 reasons why Chelsea has struggled this season

#4 Injuries and sub-par backups

Injury to Moses has been very detrimental to the squad

Chelsea strolled to the title last season and not playing in the Champions League played a huge part in it. Antonio Conte could field the same lineup every week and he had a lot of time to make the team adapt to his tactical blueprint. Most importantly, his players had time to rest in midweek and play with full intensity come the weekend.

Fast forward to the opening day fixture against Burnley this season, Gary Cahill and Cesc Fabregas got sent off in a reckless fashion. The result, a loss of 3 points and 2 key players affected the team as talisman Eden Hazard was already absent with a broken foot and it took game weeks for him to complete 60 minutes.

Morata couldn't play as a starter for a while because he needed to adapt to the physicality of the league. And Michy Batshuayi did not take the chance to get into the good books of Conte whenever called upon, which has been many times already this season.

Injuries to Kante and Victor Moses disrupted the dynamics of the whole team as the team was forced to play Fabregas in a midfield two paired with Bakayoko. Davide Zappacosta, after an electric start in the Champions League slowly faded away and showed why he wasn't the first choice for Conte.

Most recently David Luiz, the libero of the team, has been out with a knee injury for weeks now. All of this can be boiled down to one fact; the team has the added duty of Champions League fixtures as compared to last season coupled with a good run in the Carabao Cup.

This reinforces Conte's complaints to the board that he wasn't given the players he wanted as this could have taken off a lot of pressure on the first XI, giving them breathing space to rest between fixtures and eventually leading to lesser injuries.