We were good for one month. Then we were shit. A detailed look at what may have been the most important weeks of the AVB era so far (after the jump)

Look at our results from this past year in all competitions (link). If you notice,we've been pretty mediocre and / or bad for most of the year, with the notable exception of one very hot run of games.

Chelsea 4-1 Swansea. Sep 24. BPL.

Valencia 1-1 Chelsea. Sep 28. UEFA CL.

Bolton 1 - 5 Chelsea. Oct 2. BPL.

Chelsea 3 - 1 Everton. Oct 15. BPL.

Chelsea 5 - 0 RC Genk. Oct 19. UEFA CL.

QPR 1 - 0 Chelsea. Oct 23. BPL.

This run of games is fascinating to think about for a number of reasons.

First of all, the idea of Chelsea scoring 18 goals in 5 games now is almost unthinkable. It's almost hard to believe that this was even a run of games from this current team under this current manager. Which is sad.

Second, this (to me at least) emphasizes the importance of Torres and Lampard. If you notice, they were the two hottest players on the team during this run, with one or both of them scoring a goal and/or netting an assist in each of those four dominant wins. In that run, Torres scored 3 and had an assist. In that same run, Lampard scored 4 and also had an assist. Neither of these players is even remotely hot these days, and neither is Chelsea. Torres can't score for the life of him (although he has still been passing well and setting up other players), and Lampard barely gets any minutes. Maybe it's in Chelsea's best interest to get these two running hot again and more involved, especially if we want to secure fourth place. Now I have no idea how to get Torres running hot, but playing a 4-2-3-1 with Mata right behind him might be a way to start. And as far as Lampard is concerned, the man is class and I suspect that with more minutes might come some results.

Finally, this game (again, to me at least) shows how big the loss at QPR was for Chelsea. They went down to 9 men, but fought valiantly despite this and dominated the second half, but in the end were left deflated as they never found the equalizer. I'm sure most of you remember this game, and the heroic effort from the 9 guys left on the pitch. After this heartbreaking loss, Chelsea went on to lose to Arsenal, lose to Liverpool, draw with Genk, and lose to Leverkusen in the following month. This was arguably the worst run of the season, and as AVB has himself said recently, may have been the turning point of our season (source):

'I always go back to those weeks at the end of October as the shift of how things were going for us,' conceded the 34-year-old. ' In five games we lost against QPR, Arsenal, went to Blackburn to win but drew at Genk and lost to Liverpool at home, so from that ambition and desire that we were fighting for the league and strongly looking to fight for the league at QPR in less than three weeks we inverted our chances of winning the league.