Odd couple: Fabregas and Costa tandem make Chelsea Champions League favourites

Chelsea may have begun their UEFA Champions League campaign on the wrong foot with a 1-1 draw against Schalke 04, but that shouldn’t stop Jose Mourinho’s side from being considered serious contenders for cup glory. Now, more than ever.

Mourinho’s teams have become notorious for improving and being at their best in his second year at the helm. With Porto, he won the Champions League in his second full year, improving over his UEFA Cup win in the first. With Real Madrid, Mourinho dethroned Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona to win the La Liga title.

The same improvement can be expected in the second year of Mourinho’s second stint at Chelsea thanks to the addition of an odd couple that would rival Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

One dazzles fans with his technical ability and savvy mind for the game. The other wins their hearts with his courage and strength on the pitch. One prefers to assist goals rather than score, but when he does, he almost seems to glide the ball into the back of the net. The other is a scrappy goalscorer who wills and pushes the ball across the goal line.

Thanks to the addition of Spanish duo Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa, an early tie with Schalke won’t affect the team’s claim to glory.

Chelsea were disappointingly eliminated in the semifinals of last year’s Champions League by Costa and the dark horse Atletico Madrid. But with such a disjointed squad with obvious and glaring holes, reaching the latter stages of the Champions League should have been considered a success. Watching Mourinho’s side play so defensively last year should be of no surprise to anyone. There was no playmaker in the centre of the pitch to link the midfield with a forward line that was absent of a striker.

With a lackluster Fernando Torres, an aged Samuel Eto’o, and an overmatched Demba Ba, Mourinho had no clear option to lead the line. The three strikers combined to score 19 Premier League goals with Torres and Ba netting five a piece and Eto’o finishing with nine. On a team like Chelsea, with millions of pounds at their disposal, one striker should be able to surpass that total by himself.

In the middle of the pitch, Chelsea rotated between using the likes of Frank Lampard, John Obi Mikel, Willian, and Oscar. Even David Luiz was called into action on occasion. Lampard didn’t have the legs to last more than 70 minutes, and Mikel, like Ba, was overmatched. Willian and Oscar were worthy of playing time, but they didn’t always prove Mourinho’s confidence in them. Oscar would light the pitch up in one game and disappear for the next two.

Chelsea splashed the cash to fill the holes in their side. Though at current pace, spending £58.5 million on the duo would seem like a steal.

Costa has torn through the opposition, needing only four games to score an impressive seven Premier League goals. His predecessor, Torres, needed a shocking 43 games to hit the same mark. Andriy Shevchenko was almost as bad, needing 41 games. A better comparison would involve club legend Didier Drogba, who led the line during Mourinho’s first stint at Chelsea. Even Drogba needed a modest 18 games to hit seven goals.

The Spanish forward is like a pitbull terrier in a dogfight on the pitch. He’s no prettyboy like Torres with unblemished pale white skin, and not one of the dirty blonde strands of hair on his head out of place. A lot of the time, it doesn’t even look like Costa combs his hair before stepping out on the pitch. Costa attacks his opposition with a fierce determination not seen in many other players. His face, scarred and significantly wrinkled for only a 25-year-old, reminds him of the times those attacks didn’t go so well. He wears each like a badge of honour. His technical ability is often not spoken of, but that’s understandable when it’s his blunt force, strength and tenacity that give him the edge.

Sometimes, Costa is guilty of losing control. It’s not rare to see the striker mouth off to opponents, make a reckless tackle when frustrated, or even directly confront them head-to-head.

He didn’t make many friends while playing for Atletico and only four games into the Premier League, he’s already scuffled with Everton keeper Tim Howard.

But that raw aggression is exactly what Chelsea’s front line needs. Fans were witness to a hesistant and unconfident Torres too many times over the past four years. Costa is a welcome change.

Fabregas’ gifted technical play and brains complement Costa’s agression and brawn.

Criminally underappreciated and misused at Barcelona, Fabregas often found himself out of position while playing as a false nine. With Mourinho, Fabregas has been slotted back into centre midfield and has blossomed. With each passing game, he’s looking more like the world-class midfielder and playmaker he was under Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.

Mourinho has been using Fabregas as a deep-lying midfielder whose main role is to connect play from the back across midfield and into the paths of wingers and Costa, of course. Back in the position he feels most comfortable, Fabregas has been able to showcase his magistral passing, picking out Costa at will. Costa’s goal-scoring tear is largely in part to Fabregas matching the same output with assists. In only four Premier League games, Fabregas has already set up his teammates for six goals.

After his last two against Swansea City, Fabregas became the first player in Premier League history to bag assists in six straight games. Currently setting up teammates for a goal 1.55 times every 90 minutes, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see that number increase.

It’s not just his mind-blowing ability to always place the ball on the feet of his teammates but his intelligence on the pitch that gives the edge. Perhaps a benefit from playing Barcelona’s tiki-taka pass-first style of play for the last three years, Fabregas knows exactly where and when to lay off the ball to teammates, but he also knows where to be for his teammates to do the same for him.

The goal he scored against Schalke shows how he can not only out-class opponents on the pitch but out-think them too. After winning possession with a tackle near Schalke’s box, Fabregas freed up play for Eden Hazard to cut into the middle. The midfielder began running toward the middle, anticipating Hazard to stay out wide and pump in a cross from the left.

Instead, Hazard cut into the middle, drawing an extra defender with him. Fabregas cleverly read the play and changed the course of his run to head past Hazard on the left. Because he knew Hazard was drawing the extra defender, a lay off pass from the winger would leave Fabregas alone 1-on-1 with the keeper. Using his intelligence to read the play, Fabregas scored to put Chelsea ahead on the night.

The Blues wouldn’t be able to hold the lead at Stamford Bridge against the resurgent German side in the second-half, but the potential is there to make a long, deep run in the competition. And if the PlayStation-like scorelines they’ve hit in the Premier League can be of any evidence, they should do so rather easily.

After all, Chelsea now has what it didn’t last year: a little brain and a little brawn.