Former Chelsea defender Tal Ben Haim has said he is surprised by his former club’s poor start to the season but is keen for that run to continue with a fifth defeat of the season on Wednesday night according to the Daily Mail.
The Maccabi Tel-Aviv centre-back signed for Chelsea in the summer of 2007 on a Bosman transfer from Bolton Wanderers in Jose Mourinho’s last season of his first spell in charge. He made his Chelsea debut in the Community Shield match against Manchester United (which we lost on penalties) alongside Ricardo Carvalho and was an early regular in the side.
He soon found himself behind Carvalho, John Terry and Alex in the pecking order though and when Mourinho left in September and was replaced by Avram Grant the Israeli international rarely featured. He played in just 13 Premier League matches before leaving Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2008 to join Manchester City for a fee of around £5 million. He later played for Sunderland, Portsmouth, West Ham United, Queens Park Rangers, Standard Liege and Charlton Athletic before re-joining Maccabi Tel-Aviv in June 2015. He is now back at the club where he developed as a youth player before making his first team debut in April 2001 before signing for Bolton in 2004 for £150,000.
The 33-year-old said:
I’m sure everyone’s surprised and not happy. I’m sure they’re going to get over that and start winning games very fast (but) I hope that’s not going to be on Wednesday.
In relation to his short time working with Mourinho, he said:
I learned a lot in four months under him. I regret it was a very, very short period because I’m sure I could have improved a lot if I continued to play under him but it’s part of football. I’m sure he’s going to prepare the team very, very well. I know even when we played against weaker teams he always prepared us like we were going to play a Champions League final. I’m sure they’re going to prepare and take us very seriously.
I’m sure Ben Haim is right too. Even though the team would be prepared and focussed for any match there is extra pressure on them to deliver a good result following their poor start to the season. A 1-0 loss to Arsenal in the Community Shield was followed by three defeats in the first five matches in the Premier League to Manchester City, Crystal Palace and Everton.
Chelsea’s only victory this season was a 3-2 win over West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns with ten men after captain John Terry was shown the red card nine minutes into the second half. With the side already 11 points behind Manchester City in the league it may well be that the Champions League is the club’s best chance of silverware if they can solve the problems that have blighted their start to the season. A win over the Israeli champions would be a great way to kick-start the recovery and warm up for Saturday’s crucial league encounter with Arsenal.
Maccabi Tel Aviv have won the Israeli Premier League for the last three consecutive seasons and beat Ironi Kiryat Shmona to the 2014/15 title by six points. They progressed to the Champions League group stage with a 6-3 aggregate win over Maltese champions Hibernians in the Second Qualifying Round followed by beating Czech First League (Synot Liga) winners Viktoria Plzen 3-2 across both legs.
Their crowning glory was beating Swiss side Basel on away goals in the Play-off Round. After a 2-2 draw in Switzerland, they hosted Basel in Tel Aviv and Eran Zahavi’s 24th-minute equaliser was enough to see them through. It was divine retribution for Basel knocking them out of the Europa League in 2013/14.
