I visited Naijapals.com yesterday and saw the following headline “Chelsea Bombshell: Mikel
Obi Not Important” by a poster named Ayorbamy. The quote was attributed to Chelsea Coach –
Roberto DiMatteo. But upon further reading, it became clear that the title was entirely
misleading and can easily qualify as the most mis-leading title ever.

What DiMatteo actually said in the article is this “The spine of this team remains
absolutely crucial. Petr Cech, John Terry, David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Branislav Ivanovic,
Frank Lampard — they will be vital in the integration of the new players coming in.” He
did not mention Mikel Obi’s name one way or the other. As you may have noticed, DiMatteo
also did not mention other top Chelsea players including Juan Mata, Fernando Torres,
Ashley Cole, Ramires etc. Does that mean they too are not important to Chelsea?

The poster in his naïvete inferred that Mikel Obi is not important to Chelsea since the
coach did not mention his name in an interview. How he arrived at this conclusion beats
me. He should have made the same inference regarding the other top players I mentioned
earlier. If this was a random post on a random website, that would be fine. But the good
people at Naijapals inexplicably deemed it fit to make it a front page headline.

[url]http://www.naijapals.com/modules/naijapals/nigeria/topic,120544.0.html[/url]

P.S: It is true that Chelsea signed a lot of new quality players recently including Eden
Hazard, Lucas Piazon and Marko Marin. But none of them play defensive midfield. So Mikel
will likely maintain his position in the squad next season perhaps alternating with Essien
and Meirless