Over the past month, Chelsea have seen themselves slip from first in the Premier League to third with only one win in the last 5 matches, a spell that included defeats to Liverpool, Sunderland and Birmingham. Chelsea could fall 5 points behind the leaders if Manchester United win their game in hand. What can be made of Chelsea’s bad run as Chelsea fans have to be asking what’s going wrong? Who is to blame?

The first major incident occurred just over a month ago when longtime Chelsea assistant Ray Wilkins was relieved of his duties. Ray Wilkins was a well-liked coach and had a great influence on the players and still to this point no real explanation has been given for the dismissal of Wilkins from his post. Chelsea have been suffering from some injuries recently, with most of the defense missing for the past few games and talisman Frank Lampard barely even able to make it onto the training pitch yet this season. Although Chelsea have one of the youngest squads in the Premier League they are getting old where it is important. These factors could have a lot to do with Chelsea’s bad run but ultimately it is simple football – they have stopped scoring goals after starting the season with back to back 6-0 victories; the players that were scoring goals have gone off the boil. Drogba got his first goal in 6 games, Anelka has not scored in 7 games and Malouda has slowed down his scoring pace. This has led to Chelsea failing to score against Liverpool, Sunderland and Birmingham and only managing 1 against Newcastle and Fulham. Chelsea fans will make it through this little period of panic and they will turn things around, but it certainly doesn’t get any easier from this point as their next three games are against Spurs (A), Man Utd (H) and Arsenal (A). Chelsea could now conceivably go 8 games with only 1 win and fall further behind the leaders and that might just prove too much to overcome and we could see Roman Abramovich get himself a new manager for Christmas.

Speaking of new managers for Christmas, Newcastle hope to have their new manager in place by this weekend after “parting company” with Chris Hughton earlier this week. Newcastle sit in 12^th place with 19 points after earning promotion from the Championship last season. Recent results have not been great losing 3-1 to West Brom and 5-1 to Bolton, but they did pick up a point against Chelsea and we are only 5 and 6 games removed from massive wins over Sunderland and Arsenal. Even as a Sunderland fan I have to ask the question, “what on earth is Mike Ashley thinking”? Hughton had, for the most part, stabilized Newcastle, spent very little money and it certainly didn’t look like they would get relegated this season and then in a flash he is out the door with calls for a manager with more experience in the Premier League. This is typical Newcastle being predictably unpredictable. Some of the names being thrown around to take over at Newcastle may have experience in the Premier League but there are reasons why most of them are not coaching right now and, to be honest, which manager would seriously want to go to Newcastle right now?  It has, over the past 15 years, became a torrid place for managers. Go back and look at Keegan, Daglish, Gullit, Sir Bobby Robson was fired, Kinnear almost died whilst in the position. Finally, whoever does come in (Newcastle say it could be by this weekend), will not have it easy with three of the next four games against Liverpool, Spurs and Man City. If Mike Ashley was sent to destroy Newcastle, I think he should give up now, because after all this time, they are still in the Premier League, the fans are still there and the team is still half decent. Mission not accomplished Mr. Ashley!

Against France on Wednesday England looked lost, confused, disorganized and more the vast majority of the game they were outclassed. France certainly impressed with Nasri, Benzema amongst others, taking the opportunities provided to them due to the suspension of players involved in the circus that was France at the World Cup. So what happened with England? Andy Carroll, Jordan Henderson and Kieran Gibbs were making their first international starts and the experience of Ferdinand, Gerrard, Barry and Milner was supposed to provide stability to the team. However, it became all to clear after the first minute that England fell into the trap that too many teams do when they have a big, strong center forward like Carroll. The ball was hit high into the air for Carroll to win knockdowns and flick-ons far too many times. Carroll did well but lacked the support from Gerrard, Milner and Walcott, all of which play in teams that prefer to get to ball down and pass it around.

It can be argued that Fabio was missing some of his first choice players in Rooney, Terry and Hart but more important than this was the fact that England lacked the creativity of France. France used Nasri in the same position as England used Gerrard, just off the main center forward and there is certainly no comparing the playing styles of Gerrard and Nasri. The sublime one-two for the Benzema goal was evident that to play 4-5-1 you need a player that can truly unlock defenses with a single touch or pass.

If England are to continue playing this way Capello must change his personnel or maybe he should consider going against the trend and reverting back to 4-4-2, sure you can get outnumbered in the center of midfield but I very much doubt that any international team would like to play against Walcott and Adam Johnson out wide with Gerrard coming from midfield to support Carroll and Rooney. Capello is trying to fight with fire and it is simply just not working for England. The only positive that can be drawn from Wednesday games is that some of the younger players began to get experience at international level, lets hope Capello shows his stubbornness as much with this as he has with his tactical choices.

Meanwhile back in the Premier League the shocks continue with Sunderland outplaying a weakened Chelsea side at Stamford Bridge and Manchester United rescuing a late point against Villa. Bolton continue to look solid and Johan Elmander looks like a quality center forward scoring more goals this season than he has the past two years with Bolton. It is starting to look worrying for Wolves and West Ham and Blackpool’s honeymoon might just becoming to an end. This weekend sees another full slate of Premier League games with a big London derby between Spurs and Arsenal and a big game at the bottom of the table between Wolves and Blackpool. With a lot of players coming back from international duty possibly carrying injuries or suffering from a little jetlag after long flights midweek look for some more big results and big upsets this weekend in the EPL.

Now with every team in the Premier League having played 12 games, normally we would begin to see some indication as to what to expect at the end of the season, however all we see right now is parity. Outside of the top 4, which most people would have picked, there are 13 teams separated by no more than 6 points. Newcastle, Sunderland and Bolton all hold positions in top 10 and all have had big results against teams playing in Europe this season. Liverpool and Aston Villa broke into the top 10 on Wednesday night and look set to step up as they grow in confidence. This means that the usual busy Christmas period, which will see most teams play 10 games in the next 7 weeks could be even more important for a team that is playing with confidence or for a club that hits a run of bad form.  Even the Premier League top goal scorers chart has an unconventional look about it with Kevin Nolan and Florent Malouda each with 7 goals along with Andy Carroll who seems to be adapting well to life in the Premier league and could be in line for an England call up. Some of the usual suspects in Bent, Berbatov and Drogba all have 6.

Looking forward it is hard to see anyone outside of the top 4 breaking in, as Spurs seem to be struggling with big games midweek and ultimately big letdowns on Saturday afternoon. So if the Champions league spots are almost given to Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City and Arsenal where does that leaves us for Europa League spots. Do Spurs have the squad to hold on to European dreams? Can Liverpool stabilize and make another push? Or could we see Sunderland, Newcastle and Bolton pushing for European football? The later wouldn’t be a bad thing, it would allow some England fringe players to experience some European football, which is England’s ultimate problem but we will get to that next week. Michael Turner, Lee Cattermole, Jordan Henderson, Darren Bent all of Sunderland (ok I might be a little biased here) along with Andy Carroll and Joey Barton at Newcastle and Kevin Davies with his Bolton team mate Gary Cahill could all help the England set up if they were playing European football and getting used to they styles of Italian, Spanish and German teams.

After what seems like the first full set of midweek games in a very long time, there is another weekend full of Premier League soccer with some interesting games. Aston Villa host Manchester United in Saturday’s early game. Manchester United is coming of the back of a good showing against Manchester City and Villa are looking settled and resurgent under Houllier. Newcastle take on Fulham, West Brom travel to Wigan, West Ham are up against Blackpool, Spurs vs Fulham and Liverpool travel to Stoke. All 5 of these games include teams that are all within 3 points of each other, so if we see more wins than ties this weekend the Premier League could begin to separate slightly and provide a slightly clearer picture.