Hull of a job confronts Chelsea

Not for the first time this season Luiz Felipe Scolari must attempt to rebuild his Chelsea side’s shattered spirit after yet another defeat to one of their top four rivals.

On paper, Saturday’s visit to Stamford Bridge of a Hull City side currently in free-fall should provide the perfect opportunity for Chelsea to maintain their unconvincing title hopes which have left them five points behind leaders Manchester United and a game worse off.

The air of invincibility that once surrounded the Blues is diminishing with every passing week.

And last weekend’s 2-0 loss to Liverpool provided the latest evidence they are no longer the force they once were.

Having succumbed to Fernando Torres’s late double strike, Chelsea left Anfield with the unenviable record of having claimed just one point in five meetings this season against their traditional rivals of United, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Things could have been much worse for Scolari had the FA not overturned the controversial red card shown to Frank Lampard for a challenge on Xabi Alonso that would have ruled the England midfielder out for three games.

And a second stroke of luck came in the decision not to punish full-back Jose Bosingwa for an awful kick into the back of Yossi Benayoun because the incident was witnessed by a linesman who, extraordinarily, was content to let it pass.

Perhaps they could be the breaks Chelsea needed at the end of a month when manager Scolari was unable to recruit in the manner of predecessors Avram Grant and Jose Mourinho.

This time last year, Grant responded to Chelsea’s striker crisis by spending 15 million pounds on Nicolas Anelka.

But this January, with the purse strings tightly drawn, Scolari was able to bring in just one new face, the inconsistent Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma from Inter Milan.

Quaresma has promised much but so far failed to make full use of his talent and it will be a huge challenge for Scolari to reinvigorate the player he coached at international level and turn him into a Premier League force.

He is likely to start on the bench against Hull and Chelsea centre-back Ricardo Carvalho is convinced the 26-year-old can be a success.

“Quaresma is a very fast and explosive player who is a real warrior on the pitch, so he will be able to handle the physical nature of the Premier League,” said Carvalho of his international team-mate.

“But at the same time he is a very technical player and can score goals, which will be good for us.”

Carvalho missed the Liverpool clash with a hamstring problem and his absences this season – along with those of captain John Terry – have gone a long way towards explaining Chelsea’s unusual vulnerability at the back.

That weakness means that most teams visiting the Londoners now do so in the belief they can score.

And for Hull City – heading south on the back of a miserable run that has brought just one win in 15 league matches – belief is something that has been in short supply of late.

So good was their start to the campaign that they dropped out of the top half of the table for only the first time this season last weekend after a home draw with basement club West Bromwich Albion.

Manager Phil Brown hasn’t had much more luck in the transfer market after narrowly missing out on AS Roma’s Christian Panucci and seeing new five million pounds signing Jimmy Bullard quickly crocked by a knee injury.

Striker Daniel Cousin has also been ruled out for ten days after undergoing surgery and the only upbeat note for Brown has been struck by the support of his chairman Paul Duffen in the face of unexpected criticism from some of the club’s supporters.

Even that, though, confounded the manager who said: “I like to fight my own fights, put it that way.”