Chelsea’s midfield dynamo is grateful to be back after walking a long and lonely road to recovery
For Michael Essien, memories of the monotony persist. Back when the English summer was sun-drenched he had rarely deviated from a set daily routine. He would arrive at Chelsea’s near deserted training centre in Cobham for 10am, then gain what little variety he could by mixing and matching between exercise bikes, cross trainers, treadmills, weights and lengths of the swimming pool. The work-out, prolonged and painful, ended at 5pm with another energy sapping pigeon step taken on the road to recovery.
By early evening he would be back at home in front of the television to watch team-mates and compatriots participate in the World Cup finals, a stage that might have been his. The drudgery of life in rehabilitation might have left others numbed, the loneliness of intensive fitness work when denied the camaraderie of pre-season training affecting their state of mind, but Essien is stronger than that. “John Mikel Obi would be in doing his own work, and a couple of the reserve team players, but that was it, though it was not a problem for me,” he says. “I’m the kind of person who likes to be lonely. I got my head down and focused on getting fit. To be back playing now makes the hard work well worth it.”
There is a purring enthusiasm to the Ghanaian that suggests he is now intent upon making up for lost time. Essien has endured lengthy spells on the sidelines in the past two seasons, the serious injuries serving to nullify his impact. He ripped his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee two seasons ago while playing for Ghana, damage that excluded him for more than five months and, therefore, virtually the entirety of Luiz Felipe Scolari’s tenure at the club. In January, when concern had centred more on the state of a hamstring torn a month earlier, he wrecked the cartilage and meniscus in the same joint while training at the African Cup of Nations in Angola.
The loud click heard by all present that day had signalled the end of his participation in a season that yielded the club’s first Premier League and FA Cup Double. He scheduled a 10-day break at the end of the season ahead of the anticipated hefty working summer and promptly succumbed to a nasty bout of tonsillitis that dragged on for a week. In that sorry context, his glee at a return to first-team football is utterly understandable.
The midfielder, along with Mikel, played in all five of the champions’ pre-season friendlies and West Bromwich Albion faced a familiar rampaging figure last Saturday in Chelsea’s 6-0 opening-day win. “It was great to be back,” says Essien. “There’s relief there, too, of course. It was so frustrating to be back in that position, out of the team and in the treatment room, but these things happen. The knee is fine. There has been no reaction, either after training or after games. If anything, it feels stronger than before. I’m not scared to go into tackles with it. Not at all.
“I suppose I knew what to expect. I’d been injured the previous year, and I’m a strong guy mentally. I’ve learned to be. I just got working hard to get myself fit. There are times when it is hard, when you’re on the outside, but I can honestly say that winning the Premier League last season meant as much to me as it did in my first season at the club. I still managed to enjoy the occasion with everyone, feel part of it, and was on the pitch after the Wigan game in May celebrating with everyone. The emotion was just the same as winning it that first year under José [Mourinho], when I’d played more of a part in the season. I have a medal and it means as much to me. Sure, you wish you could be out on the pitch, or going up to pick up the FA Cup, but you have to be realistic: everything was about keeping focused, getting over the injury and getting fit again.”
Essien played 14 league games last season, and a meagre 11 the season before, but was still offered a contract extension this summer that should extend his stay at Stamford Bridge to a decade. Carlo Ancelotti will be rejoicing to have his midfield dynamo restored to the fold, with the 27-year-old offering him rare options. He was employed in a familiar position on the right of a narrow midfield three against West Brom, with licence to spring forward and unsettle nervous opponents. Yet he retains the ability to anchor that central trio – a role offered to Mikel last Saturday – and, unlike a more conventional Claude Makélelé clone, can still boast that explosive thrust through the middle.
At his best, the midfielder is irrepressible, his energy infectious and driving his team-mates on. Ancelotti can use him as a lynchpin as he seeks to integrate the £18.2m Brazilian Ramires into the set-up in the weeks and months ahead. The options available to the manager appear mouthwatering. “People are saying I’m one of the new signings this year, and I am looking forward to playing more consistently after missing so much of the last two seasons,” says Essien, speaking at a Barclays Spaces for Sports event. “This can be a big season. I don’t think I’ve still got things to show Carlo Ancelotti. He has seen me play a lot, even before he was our manager, and he knows what I can do. It’s not as if I have anything to prove to him. He knows I will go out there and work really hard for the team every week.
“It is an exciting time. Some players have left but Ramires has come in, a player I haven’t seen much of but getting into the Brazilian team is not easy, so he must be good. I hope I can work well with him. It will be up to the manager where we all play. I’ve always enjoyed getting forward, pushing up-field to help us in our attacks, but I think you can still do that from a central position too. You don’t have to sit deep all the time. But, wherever I play, it is joyful being in a team that’s playing like this at the moment. We’re scoring goals and there’s freedom in our play.
“The manager asks us to get forward more often and create problems for opponents. People said he was a defensive coach at Milan, but maybe he has a different kind of player here than he had in Italy. You can see how he wants us to play every week. Teams struggle when they come to Stamford Bridge and, if we score one or two, everything seems to open up for us. We need to work hard to get into that position in the first place, but you can see what happens once we are ahead.”
Chelsea have been untouchable in their most recent Premier League contests. This is a team who have plundered 47 goals in their 10 games at Stamford Bridge since the turn of the year, and 21 in their last three. There have been regular avalanches after half-time as desperate opponents seek a route back into contests. Wigan will tremble at the prospect of confronting the champions this afternoon having shipped eight to them on the final day of last season in south-west London and four on the opening afternoon to unfancied Blackpool. Ancelotti’s team, though, were defeated at the DW Stadium early last season – their first loss under the Italian – and will be wary of enduring a repeat. “But that was last season, that is gone now,” adds Essien. Everything about this player is forward thinking.
Michael Essien was appearing at the Linford Christie Outdoor Sports
