N’Golo Kanté is Chelsea’s dynamic allrounder in a team lacking structure
How much can be expected of a single player? That N’Golo Kanté is an exceptional footballer is no revelation but there is still something remarkable about the fact that the best holding midfielder in the world has become a totemic Roy of the Rovers figure at Chelsea. There he is darting across his own box to stifle a Liverpool attack. There he is slipping a pass in to the edge of the box and looking for a return. And there he is, drifting in from the right and finding the top corner with an ungainly but nonetheless precise finish. He is their alpha and their omega, their beginning and their end. He is all things to all men and by that means he might save some games – but not this one.
Kanté was exceptional against Liverpool, in the second half a blur, the force driving Chelsea forward. Only one Chelsea player made more tackles than him, only one more interceptions than him, only one had more shots than him and nobody completed more dribbles than him. He has, against expectations, transformed himself into a complete midfielder.
But seeing him play like that it is impossible not to feel a certain ambivalence. Why is he having to do this? Ultimately, for all that it fits football’s love of narrative and its continuing obsession with individuals, Roy of the Rovers football is for comics. Steven Gerrard pulled off more implausible feats than was reasonable and gave defining performances in the finals of the FA Cup and Champions League but, as his time at Liverpool showed, that is no way to mount a consistent challenge in the league.
Chelsea had a supremely gifted holding midfielder, somebody who had been instrumental to two title wins with two different sides and had then lifted the World Cup, but opted to bring in a very different player who operated in his position to satisfy the demands of Maurizio Sarri. The result has been Kanté operating in a more advanced position that has forced him to learn new tricks.
Profoundly gifted and diligent as he is, he has. He may have skewed one chance wide from the edge of the box on Sunday but he then scored with a little scuttle in-field and precise shot into the top corner. But, remarkable as that strike was, it was only his 15th league goal in a career now in its eighth season of regular senior football.
Since Chelsea signed Jorginho their transfer ban has made it harder for them to rectify the situation. And so the issue persists: Jorginho, frail and neat, playing his cerebral passes and looking a little bewildered by the tumult around him, Kanté charging forward rather than controlling the area just in front of the defensive line as he used to.
With Kanté in the side from the start for only the third time this season, Chelsea looked a little more secure than they have done, less vulnerable to attacks through that central area. But still, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that fielding him and Jorginho together creates needless complications.
That Liverpool’s two goals here came from free-kicks, following the concession to a free-kick against Valencia last Tuesday makes defending from set-plays a specific and immediate concern. The first was a ferocious drive from Trent Alexander-Arnold but it was noticeable that Jorginho, whose job was to charge down the taker after it had been laid off, ended up making himself as small as possible. Defending, it is fair to say, does not come naturally to him.
To criticise Frank Lampard for that is perhaps a little unfair. The issues of personnel pre-date him and are a result of Chelsea’s piecemeal approach to recruitment. But conceding 16 goals in eight games this season is a problem that requires urgent attention.
Kanté is clearly a large part of the solution but he cannot be all the solution. An all-round performance such as he produced on Sunday, particularly in the second half, is a paradoxical kind of excellence. On the one hand a display as remorseless and intelligent as that must be admired; on the other the fact that it was necessary, perhaps even that it was possible, speaks of profound structural deficiencies.