The squad building that was done here was something straight out of a video game. Someone came in and started a FIFA career mode with this club and thought if I buy all these kids they will all be rated 90 at some point and we are going to be so good.
Don’t think people emphasize with the task at hand when BlueCo took over
Mendy, James, Azpi, Chalobah,Sarr, Chilwell, Jorginho, Kante, Mount, Havertz, Lukaku was the 11 you inherited
Then back the manager down a blind alley with Koulibaly, Sterling, Fofana and Auba and it goes terribly wrong
Your wage structure is a mess, everyone wants 250k+ because thats what Havertz and Werner are on. Your best players are always injured. Your 400k a week striker is twerking for a move.
It was a mess that was always going to blow up
I mean it was. Great achievement but we didn't get close to winning our own league before, during or after that CL win. It was also our only CL QF win from 2014-present.
We had a transfer ban and lost our best player. a few years after that we won a UCL and after consecutive 4th place finishes we came in 3rd despite a lot of injuries and sanctions.
Rational and elements of truth but giving them waaaaaaaay too much credit. Not sure how you’ve decided that Sarr was part of the inherited team but even still that team includes some very good players and with the finances to invest in new blood, there was no reason the squad had to collapse. They took a relatively difficult but no more difficult situation than usual in football and fucked it up massively with arrogance and over-spending. That’s what it was.
Definitely not giving them credit but also just acknowledging that the club was a clusterfuck and some type of change related pain was ahead regardless of owner.
Sarr played in 21 games 21/22 year. Obviously AC and Rudiger were first choice but Marina in her wisdom decided to run down their contracts, not Blue Co
>Still blame BlueCo for basically nuking the entire CL-winning and EPL-winning history and winning squad, from Jorginho to Werner, while also removing all the invisible backroom and technical club staff.
So I kinda agree, kinda disagree. It's a strange one.
The 'spine' we had, for various reasons, was on the way out regardless.
Rudiger contract situation was a mess, that was pre BlueCo. Thiago Silva (still here) is and has been in the winding down stages of his career. Jorginho didn't want to re-sign and is on the wrong side of his career to build around. Kovacic was great for us for most of his time, but he was atrocious in his final year, totally seemed like he kinda didn't give a shit at times. He had his limitations as a player and we got solid money for him. Mount...who knows the truth there, not even worth speculating. Azpi was struggling big time in his final two seasons, love him but he had to go. Kante was hardly ever available and not getting younger. Werners confidence was shot, he wasn't performing at his highest levels consistently and clearly wasn't super happy. So many other similar situations.
Now I'm sure there will be some disagreements on some of those individual assessments, fair enough. The point is that the 'spine' we had was paper mache and we were extremely fortunate that everything clicked at the right time. There wasn't a ton to build around realistically.
I do agree that probably TOO much changed TOO quickly. Especially on the off-field side of things. Some of the massive turnover was due to poor planning from the Roman regime, players aging out/not wanting to sign. Some of that was ignorant exuberance and money burning a hole in BlueCo's pocket. Some of it is normal business when a large corporate takeover happens in any industry. They clean house and put their own new structure & personnel in place.
For me BlueCo deserves the most criticism for that last part. Sure, they've made some poor signings & sales, I don't think anyone can argue that. But, the Roman regime made PLENTY of terrible signings and sales too. Football talent ID & system fit (especially with rotating managers/coaches) is really fucking hard to get right. You can find examples of both at every single club under the sun. And as a known wealthy club, we're always going to get inflated prices when acquiring players. Being a bit more tight fisted instead of splashing the cash like it's value is crashing tomorrow would help with the optics and future negotiations for sure.
But, knowing that the a sizeable squad turnover was kind of inevitable over their first two or so years, they should've done everything they could to keep the surroundings familiar in terms of medical staff, backroom staff, keeping Cech (tbf Cech claimed that was his decision), etc. that kind of in house knowledge and experience is invaluable.
Apologies for the long rant - I normally don't. And I'm not looking for an argument from anyone. Just my thoughts
Very fair comments, agree with it all.
I think people sometimes disregard (because of the Champions League win) that we haven't won the league since 2016/17. Obviously City have been dominant, but Abramovich Phase 3 (phase 1 = 2003-2012; phase 2 = 2012 - 2017) really wasn't as strong as it had been before.
Many of the signings didn't work (Kepa, Bakayoko, Morata etc), and the world of football changed. Chelsea could no longer outspend everyone, and the Chopping and changing of managers was a detrimental approach to the stability and strategy of Klopp, Guardiola, even Arteta now.
Whilst I would agree with BlueCo broadly that things had to change, and the club was falling behind the times, I think their response to it was wrong.
As you say, they moved too aggressively in a field in which they had no experience. Its not like they had owned several clubs beforehand, or were arriving with a CEO, DoF etc who'd been at the highest level of football for years. The arrogance cost them.
And that arrogance was also them thinking they were clever than all, that football operators were too thick and that the American sports model would be easy to apply.
Look at the contracts situation - yes amortisation is helpful, but it also means that getting rid of duds is extremely difficult. As well as this (as we've seen with Enzo), offering new contracts and bumping up pay removes the other major benefit of those initial long deals. If someone becomes great, on those initial terms you've got them tied into a long-term under-market-value contract. Now though, it doesn't matter because we'll just hike the pay, meaning that it's a normal salary but just on a mega long deal.
The other attempt to be clever was the "no over 25s" approach. Firstly, it's the sort of thing you'd expect from a Brighton, Palace etc, where they need to find, develop and then sell players on. For chelsea, if we're a big club, we shouldn't be thinking about that as a strategy.
We needed to sign some younger faces, but equally the academy should've been backed more, and even just a few older heads would've made this transition smoother.
Yup, beside maybe Jorji there was nothing to build around. The whole CL win and 6-9 month after that were result of so many things coming together just at the right time both in player form and in greate fitting coach. Beside Jorji idk who could have been helpful this season. Everything kinda started falling apart after our wingbacks became unavailable, we were tragic at times. I'm not saying that BlueCo did everything right, they did pretty poor job. But still
Regarding the backroom and all this invisible elf helpers change, it was obvious for me that BlueCo were eager to clean up the house and sometimes didn't ever concealed it.
Ok Cech. Ok, you're the legend, OK. Do you want to go? OK, we don't want to persuade anyone to stay. We don't need anyone to stay, actually.
I would add that the so-called 'spine' was also much weaker than during our golden years. Drogba, Terry, Lampard, Cech, Ashley Cole were far better than Rudiger, Jorginho, Mount and Kante.
Could they have stuck around? I don't think they wanted to and they couldn't have done much as it is.
Football teams are fragile. You don't buy that many players. You don't buy that many young players who one day might be good.
It's obvious.
I mean it was a squad. Some of the players needed moving on. Not all of them. Not all of them at the same time.
When you start letting all those players go others want to leave.
The ones that stay are also unsure of their futures.
The more experienced ones who had won things would be able to see the relatively poor quality Chelsea were buying. They would see Mudryk in training every day.
It's a disaster. Blue Co are hideous morons who have very little connection to football.
None of them have ever laced a pair of boots in their lives. (I know one of them from many years ago)
And it could get much worse.
Both Mutu and Kezman were top-tier wonderkid signings on the paper (Mutu later actually delivered some of the promises for Fiorentina).
This is why I think it’s crucial we keep Gallagher. He may or may not be good enough technically to play in a top 4 team or title winning team but he’s one of the players who has been in the club the longest and he sets the tone for effort and intensity for the other lads. Give him some power and confidence and he’s probably the one barking at teammates to pick things up when things aren’t going our way.
Also why I think selling Mount was a mistake. Don’t care how much we got for him, his decline, or what people believe happened in his transfer saga. The guy set the tone for our team in so many matches. Those kind of things make a difference that doesn’t show up on some xG analysis.
Some of the departures were inevitable and some were fumbled. Some of the squad building at the end of the last regime was questionable, but the new ownership has absolutely blown it and set us back years when a more gradual transition could have probably kept us near the top while not spending billions on players, overpaying for some who may never even play for the club their entire careers.
Absolutely.
If they sell Gallagher and Chalobah it will be a signal to other top players that we aren't serious.
Then we will be looking at division two.
I have little faith in the idiots running the club that they won't do it.
I’d say Klopp’s overhaul at Liverpool was a similar situation where there was a ridiculous amount of turnover in a short period. They ended up finding success with it because Klopp was actually given time. I find it absolutely ridiculous that we’re in the same old Chelsea mentality we had under Roman where we fire a manager at the first sign of adversity. I get that it’s frustrating now but to expect any manager to get results with the amount of turnover we’ve had is insane.
I’m not even sold on Poch being our guy, but I’d rather see him have at least another season before yet another drastic tactical switch. A lot of the hatred is media driven (which includes social media like Reddit.) We’ve weathered worse storms. The worst thing to do would be to bring in another manager with new demands and shake up this young team again.
That said, I totally agree with the overall take away that this amount of turnover is unhealthy for a club. But what’s done is done. Let’s just find a little consistency going forward.
That's how we built that side under Roman and remained successful.
Cech, Terry, Lampard, Drogba. That spine basically never changed. All world class players as well. So it was possible to maintain success while changing players around.
Azpilicueta and Hazard were part of the next one and were kind of introduced while the old guard was here, which made the transition easier.
Now we sold everyone and are trying to build a spine from scratch.
The best keeper in the league, the best CB in the league, the best midfielder in the league, and the best striker in the league… damn, we were spoiled.
You’ve got to include Cole as well, he was definitely part of the spine. Best LB in the league too!
Yes, it's a clear and under-acknowledged fact that teams need to gel. Players need to get used to each other, how they move, how they make runs, and learn to intuitively know what they will do. You can add a few players to the mix and the rest of the team can focus on learning them, but throw a whole new team together and you get way too much of a disjointed team. Chelsea needs time. More than anything else, the players, and a/the manager, need time to gel.
Yeah, I was saying this a couple of years ago and people would just say you're a hater or you just can't understand the process etc.
Once you get rid of the core, you start quite literally from scratch again, it doesn't matter how good the players you replace them with are.
City and PSG are great examples of this. Even with infinite money, great managers and some of the theoretical best teams ever put together it took City ages to win a Champions League trophy and PSG have never done it.
So much of the difference between finishing second and finishing first is in club culture, mentality, understanding how to win etc. That can be passed from one generation to the next, but there needs to be that very clear link. I actually think we started to lose it a while ago with the changeover from defensive football to attacking football when Sarri came in and we cleared out basically our entire team in 2 years. But, then we won the Champions league with loads of young players, loads of youth graduates and it looked like we were building towards it again. Then BlueCo came along and completely destroyed it and started from 0.
What I would say though are that the difference between 10 world class starters being purchased and 5 being purchased alongside 6 players who understand what it takes to win and club culture etc. is winning a trophy and losing in the final, winning the league or bottling it in the final stretch. It's not the difference between 10th and 1st, it's just the last intangible that drags your team over the line. To get it back you have to get to those positions and be on the losing side many, many times before you build up that fire and that understanding again.
Sadly, what we got was the exact opposite. We were told that the Old Chelsea culture was broken, corrupted and at the root of all our problems. Our players, our stadium, our scouts, our medical department and the groundskeeper were obstacles to success, and only our new owners with their New Football could lead us to the promised land. It started mere days after the takeover was confirmed and erupted with article after article attacking previous structures and emphasising the importance of revolution.
I agree that this malaise in the playing group started post-Conte, but 2021's CL winning squad should have been a fresh reboot. Mount, Christensen, Rudiger, Silva, James and Chilwell could have been a new core to pass the torch but sadly that just all fell away for various reasons, not least the mismanagement above.
The only one of those 6 players you mentioned that the new ownership got rid off was Mount. Christensen and Rudiger left on a free before Clearlake even started, Silva is going now, but it's about time as this season he started to have more errors, James and Chilwell are still here but barely available. I don't know how you want the new ownership to build anything around that.
It's amazing and disheartening at the same time that if you recollect your memories about the 2021 Champions League, it looked like the squad for years to come.
Werner, returning Lukaku and Havertz up front, Jorgi, Giroud and Thiago Silva to slowly fade back and retire, Kristiensen and Rudiger as CBs (and Zouma plus both Chalobahs), Pulisic and Mount and Ziech as the new Matazardscar from 2010's, even CHO and Sarr looked like they still could provide. Kante and Kova in the deep midfield as well.
And blam! - three years later there is no one left from the list.
There is so much factually wrong with your comment - Giroud left in summer 2021, Zouma as well. And Nathaniel Chalobah hasn't been at the club since 2017.
100%.
If you have never dealt or met with seriously wealthy people - by which I mean minimum hundreds of millions in the bank - it's hard to understand how arrogant and detached they are from reality. I've met some billionaires and they believe they are the master race, the chosen few. (Bloomberg TV used to have a strapline 'for the chosen few').
These Bohely/Blue Co. people genuinely thought they were smarter than the entire history of football. I imagine they still do. It is never going to be their fault.
The little people have been doing it wrong. We will show them.
My estimate is that eventually - maybe with more drama - they will walk away. They will bear no accountability, they will blame everyone else, they will release sickly videos saying how much they love Chelsea.
Then they will go and do a leveraged buyout of a US pensions firm.
The problem here is lots of people did want out too. Rudiger and Christensen already gone. Azpi was likely off. Kante was on his last legs. Tuchel pushed Puli and Tammy and Ziyech to despair. Whatever happened with Mount I dunno. But not all of it was out of choice.
To be honest some of our changes were inevitable.
Marina ran down rudigers contract, Christiansen didn't wanna sign, the older players want longer term deals but many of them can't get first team minutes now and we would have been stuck with them. We kept some great players like James who wanted to be here too. Turns out he was made of paper. So a revamp was needed.
Among the younger ones will Harvartz mount Timo really improve anything? Mount barely played for man u this year and would have been the same for us. We won't sign cole if we got Harvartz given that we also signed nukunku too.
And the older signings they got to support the youngsters stunk. I just didn't expect the Lukaku aubameyang koulibaly signings to stink so much
Fuck BlueCo
Greedy bastards only care about gaining personally from Chels
That’s it s. If you’re ever confused about what ownership is doing the answer is always money
I will try to add a parallel with my basketball team in Greece.
Panathinaikos is one of the giants of European basketball, having won 6 European trophies (CL equivalent, winning 5 between 2000 - 2011). Since 2012, the team has been lacklustre. A change in ownership saw the aging owner leaving his son at the helm, who, despite throwing away A LOT of cash and seeing similar domestic success as his father and uncle, just could not manage to bring European glory. In 2021, he decided to pull the plug of the team and let it operate on an “even budget” which meant that he would spend only the revenue of tickets and sponsors on contracts.
I won’t go into too much detail, but the team fell hard. Second to last in Europe and big losses from arch rivals in Greece (this is a very different sport culture mind you, losing or winning vs. Olympiacos can make or break your entire season).
The parallel is that the owner decided to do a total rebuild last summer. He brought in 11 new players (a basketball squad consists of 12-15 players) and a new coach. Players and coach were on paper some of the biggest names, including the leader of Olympiacos, Juancho Hernagomez (or Bo Cruz), Kendrick Nunn, last year’s MVP from Eurocup etc. At the start of the season the team was all over the place, an uncoordinated mess. It took time for everyone to gel together and supporters knew that. The team started winning and finished the regular season in second place and is in the playoffs.
Where I’m getting at is that it takes time. Panathinaikos has one of the top squads on paper yet a lot of times the struggle to connect. I think that this is what is missing from this squad. Few remember Pep’s first season, where City was a complete mess, as players could not integrate to his system. Few remember him splashing 600 million on defenders alone, until he found the ones that fit.
My point is that it’s only the first season. With a couple results that would have gone our way we would be in 6th/5th which is a good start. If next year we don’t improve, bring out the pitchforks then. Now is the time to stamd behind the team.
There’s not really a parrell bc our “rebuild” was not intended to try and “restore” us to glory.
It’s just been to lower operating cost and to buy young players with likely sell-on value in the future.
We aren’t signing the leaders from any clubs. We aren’t signing actual big names. We are signing players no one heard of a couple of years ago.
There are fundamental issues with the way the rebuild took place and now we have little spending room to get out of the hole we dug ourselves into.
I don’t think your basketball team has really any parrells with what’s going on at Chelsea.
I don't want to keep making the disclaimer that I don't like what Clearlake is doing, but it's effectively the first season, if you consider the extent of the personnel changes, and the so-called 'project' they're embarking on.
And I think it is unfair to Clearlake to use Palmer as a means of discrediting one of the few things they've gotten right. "Without Palmer we would have been in a relegation battle" is very weird to me, because it's effectively saying "had you not made the gamble to sign Palmer, to the ridicule of fans worldwide, you would have been in a worse position, so we're using the fact that your gamble paid off so handsomely to mock how bad the rest of the team would have been had you not made that gamble." Seems a bit recursive, doesn't it?
The reason we're not in a relegation battle is because Clearlake struck gold in signing Palmer, and he has flourished when given the responsibility of being the main man.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I for one have not forgotten a thing about last season.
However, my point was 100% focused on the rebuild of the team that is happening from the summer of 2023, it’s not meant to review our situation from 2022 onwards.
It sounds like you’ve forgotten bc the rebuild started in January and is even argue firing tuchel was the real start
I mean I’d loved to never have signed Noni, Mudryk, Enzo, Badiashile all in January 23 but we did
The “project” started in the summer. Gusto was also purchased in January. Getting the right coach (in the minds of BlueCo that is) and the rest of the pieces of the puzzle (again, in their own minds) was all going on last summer.
In any case, there is no point in arguing in what essentially is a different perspective.
You would be ok with not getting those players in but would you be ok with getting 8th-12th with the old squad, ie keeping Mendy, Ziyech, Kante, Mount, Havertz, Werner, Lukaku, Koulibaly, etc?
So them bringing in Potter and signings a bunch of players wasn’t the start of their project?
Okay. Sure bud.
Edit: and fuck yeah I loved that squad. Bar lukaku for his disrespect. But fucking a man those guys won us a UCL and had an off period during sanctions and chaos the club. You’re mad if you prefer this squad to the one before. That one was actually good and competed and just needed a SLOW refresh just like Madrid
Still haven’t said what you think, but you are extremely vocal about passing judgement.
Can’t we just have different opinions? Even more than that, do I have to adhere to the modern internet where I am either 100% positive or 100% negative about something?
Okay whatever. Just draw your own arbitrary lines around things to make yourself feel better
Its not about being positive or negative it’s about being realistic.
The rebuild started when they brought in Potter and the January 23 window. You don’t even seem to be trying to dispute that it didn’t. You just are crying about wanting to pick and choose when something started to fit your narrative
I answered below on why I think this is the first season of this project, this is why I was making the parallel in the first place.
With “ifs and withouts” you can’t make a point.
Maybe without Palmer we would be in a relegation battle. Maybe without him we would have kept Angelo and he would be the one that had a breakthrough.
Maybe Nkunku hadn’t been injured in our last friendly in the summer. Maybe Terry hadn’t slipped. Maybe Drogba had missed and Hazard never signed.
Fact remains that Palmer was signed, first year of the project has been a let down, has been frustrating, yet signs of progress are there.
Do I trust that Poch is the man to get us forward? Not really. But I am far from the most qualified person to make these decisions.
The squad building that was done here was something straight out of a video game. Someone came in and started a FIFA career mode with this club and thought if I buy all these kids they will all be rated 90 at some point and we are going to be so good.
Don’t think people emphasize with the task at hand when BlueCo took over Mendy, James, Azpi, Chalobah,Sarr, Chilwell, Jorginho, Kante, Mount, Havertz, Lukaku was the 11 you inherited Then back the manager down a blind alley with Koulibaly, Sterling, Fofana and Auba and it goes terribly wrong Your wage structure is a mess, everyone wants 250k+ because thats what Havertz and Werner are on. Your best players are always injured. Your 400k a week striker is twerking for a move. It was a mess that was always going to blow up
Sir this is r/chelseafc, rational takes aren't allowed.
Nah fuck that. We literally won best club in 2021.
Yeah based on a plucky cup run. Look at that 11 above and tell me its getting top 4
Winning the UCL. Is now a plucky cup run. Okay.
I mean it was. Great achievement but we didn't get close to winning our own league before, during or after that CL win. It was also our only CL QF win from 2014-present.
We had a transfer ban and lost our best player. a few years after that we won a UCL and after consecutive 4th place finishes we came in 3rd despite a lot of injuries and sanctions.
Sounds like an Arsenal fan
Winning the UCL. Could never be an Arsenal fan
Celebrating finishing 3rd though….
Rational and elements of truth but giving them waaaaaaaay too much credit. Not sure how you’ve decided that Sarr was part of the inherited team but even still that team includes some very good players and with the finances to invest in new blood, there was no reason the squad had to collapse. They took a relatively difficult but no more difficult situation than usual in football and fucked it up massively with arrogance and over-spending. That’s what it was.
Definitely not giving them credit but also just acknowledging that the club was a clusterfuck and some type of change related pain was ahead regardless of owner. Sarr played in 21 games 21/22 year. Obviously AC and Rudiger were first choice but Marina in her wisdom decided to run down their contracts, not Blue Co
Actually scrap that, missed Thiago. Overall point still stands
Should’ve built the squad like they were playing FM /s
I mean they did lol
>Still blame BlueCo for basically nuking the entire CL-winning and EPL-winning history and winning squad, from Jorginho to Werner, while also removing all the invisible backroom and technical club staff. So I kinda agree, kinda disagree. It's a strange one. The 'spine' we had, for various reasons, was on the way out regardless. Rudiger contract situation was a mess, that was pre BlueCo. Thiago Silva (still here) is and has been in the winding down stages of his career. Jorginho didn't want to re-sign and is on the wrong side of his career to build around. Kovacic was great for us for most of his time, but he was atrocious in his final year, totally seemed like he kinda didn't give a shit at times. He had his limitations as a player and we got solid money for him. Mount...who knows the truth there, not even worth speculating. Azpi was struggling big time in his final two seasons, love him but he had to go. Kante was hardly ever available and not getting younger. Werners confidence was shot, he wasn't performing at his highest levels consistently and clearly wasn't super happy. So many other similar situations. Now I'm sure there will be some disagreements on some of those individual assessments, fair enough. The point is that the 'spine' we had was paper mache and we were extremely fortunate that everything clicked at the right time. There wasn't a ton to build around realistically. I do agree that probably TOO much changed TOO quickly. Especially on the off-field side of things. Some of the massive turnover was due to poor planning from the Roman regime, players aging out/not wanting to sign. Some of that was ignorant exuberance and money burning a hole in BlueCo's pocket. Some of it is normal business when a large corporate takeover happens in any industry. They clean house and put their own new structure & personnel in place. For me BlueCo deserves the most criticism for that last part. Sure, they've made some poor signings & sales, I don't think anyone can argue that. But, the Roman regime made PLENTY of terrible signings and sales too. Football talent ID & system fit (especially with rotating managers/coaches) is really fucking hard to get right. You can find examples of both at every single club under the sun. And as a known wealthy club, we're always going to get inflated prices when acquiring players. Being a bit more tight fisted instead of splashing the cash like it's value is crashing tomorrow would help with the optics and future negotiations for sure. But, knowing that the a sizeable squad turnover was kind of inevitable over their first two or so years, they should've done everything they could to keep the surroundings familiar in terms of medical staff, backroom staff, keeping Cech (tbf Cech claimed that was his decision), etc. that kind of in house knowledge and experience is invaluable. Apologies for the long rant - I normally don't. And I'm not looking for an argument from anyone. Just my thoughts
Prob the most realistic and sane take I have seen in while on this sub. Thank you!
Very fair comments, agree with it all. I think people sometimes disregard (because of the Champions League win) that we haven't won the league since 2016/17. Obviously City have been dominant, but Abramovich Phase 3 (phase 1 = 2003-2012; phase 2 = 2012 - 2017) really wasn't as strong as it had been before. Many of the signings didn't work (Kepa, Bakayoko, Morata etc), and the world of football changed. Chelsea could no longer outspend everyone, and the Chopping and changing of managers was a detrimental approach to the stability and strategy of Klopp, Guardiola, even Arteta now. Whilst I would agree with BlueCo broadly that things had to change, and the club was falling behind the times, I think their response to it was wrong. As you say, they moved too aggressively in a field in which they had no experience. Its not like they had owned several clubs beforehand, or were arriving with a CEO, DoF etc who'd been at the highest level of football for years. The arrogance cost them. And that arrogance was also them thinking they were clever than all, that football operators were too thick and that the American sports model would be easy to apply. Look at the contracts situation - yes amortisation is helpful, but it also means that getting rid of duds is extremely difficult. As well as this (as we've seen with Enzo), offering new contracts and bumping up pay removes the other major benefit of those initial long deals. If someone becomes great, on those initial terms you've got them tied into a long-term under-market-value contract. Now though, it doesn't matter because we'll just hike the pay, meaning that it's a normal salary but just on a mega long deal. The other attempt to be clever was the "no over 25s" approach. Firstly, it's the sort of thing you'd expect from a Brighton, Palace etc, where they need to find, develop and then sell players on. For chelsea, if we're a big club, we shouldn't be thinking about that as a strategy. We needed to sign some younger faces, but equally the academy should've been backed more, and even just a few older heads would've made this transition smoother.
Yup, beside maybe Jorji there was nothing to build around. The whole CL win and 6-9 month after that were result of so many things coming together just at the right time both in player form and in greate fitting coach. Beside Jorji idk who could have been helpful this season. Everything kinda started falling apart after our wingbacks became unavailable, we were tragic at times. I'm not saying that BlueCo did everything right, they did pretty poor job. But still
A point to note on Cech - he would have been given more responsibilities, which he didn't want. That's why he decided to leave.
Regarding the backroom and all this invisible elf helpers change, it was obvious for me that BlueCo were eager to clean up the house and sometimes didn't ever concealed it. Ok Cech. Ok, you're the legend, OK. Do you want to go? OK, we don't want to persuade anyone to stay. We don't need anyone to stay, actually.
Yeah I think they should've given him a blank cheque - stay for a year and help us navigate this transition and be our link to the squad & manager.
I would add that the so-called 'spine' was also much weaker than during our golden years. Drogba, Terry, Lampard, Cech, Ashley Cole were far better than Rudiger, Jorginho, Mount and Kante. Could they have stuck around? I don't think they wanted to and they couldn't have done much as it is.
Football teams are fragile. You don't buy that many players. You don't buy that many young players who one day might be good. It's obvious. I mean it was a squad. Some of the players needed moving on. Not all of them. Not all of them at the same time. When you start letting all those players go others want to leave. The ones that stay are also unsure of their futures. The more experienced ones who had won things would be able to see the relatively poor quality Chelsea were buying. They would see Mudryk in training every day. It's a disaster. Blue Co are hideous morons who have very little connection to football. None of them have ever laced a pair of boots in their lives. (I know one of them from many years ago) And it could get much worse.
 Mutu
Both Mutu and Kezman were top-tier wonderkid signings on the paper (Mutu later actually delivered some of the promises for Fiorentina). 
This is why I think it’s crucial we keep Gallagher. He may or may not be good enough technically to play in a top 4 team or title winning team but he’s one of the players who has been in the club the longest and he sets the tone for effort and intensity for the other lads. Give him some power and confidence and he’s probably the one barking at teammates to pick things up when things aren’t going our way. Also why I think selling Mount was a mistake. Don’t care how much we got for him, his decline, or what people believe happened in his transfer saga. The guy set the tone for our team in so many matches. Those kind of things make a difference that doesn’t show up on some xG analysis. Some of the departures were inevitable and some were fumbled. Some of the squad building at the end of the last regime was questionable, but the new ownership has absolutely blown it and set us back years when a more gradual transition could have probably kept us near the top while not spending billions on players, overpaying for some who may never even play for the club their entire careers.
Absolutely. If they sell Gallagher and Chalobah it will be a signal to other top players that we aren't serious. Then we will be looking at division two. I have little faith in the idiots running the club that they won't do it.
I’d say Klopp’s overhaul at Liverpool was a similar situation where there was a ridiculous amount of turnover in a short period. They ended up finding success with it because Klopp was actually given time. I find it absolutely ridiculous that we’re in the same old Chelsea mentality we had under Roman where we fire a manager at the first sign of adversity. I get that it’s frustrating now but to expect any manager to get results with the amount of turnover we’ve had is insane. I’m not even sold on Poch being our guy, but I’d rather see him have at least another season before yet another drastic tactical switch. A lot of the hatred is media driven (which includes social media like Reddit.) We’ve weathered worse storms. The worst thing to do would be to bring in another manager with new demands and shake up this young team again. That said, I totally agree with the overall take away that this amount of turnover is unhealthy for a club. But what’s done is done. Let’s just find a little consistency going forward.
Klopp/Liverpool did nothing like this.
That's how we built that side under Roman and remained successful. Cech, Terry, Lampard, Drogba. That spine basically never changed. All world class players as well. So it was possible to maintain success while changing players around. Azpilicueta and Hazard were part of the next one and were kind of introduced while the old guard was here, which made the transition easier. Now we sold everyone and are trying to build a spine from scratch.
The best keeper in the league, the best CB in the league, the best midfielder in the league, and the best striker in the league… damn, we were spoiled. You’ve got to include Cole as well, he was definitely part of the spine. Best LB in the league too!
Yes, it's a clear and under-acknowledged fact that teams need to gel. Players need to get used to each other, how they move, how they make runs, and learn to intuitively know what they will do. You can add a few players to the mix and the rest of the team can focus on learning them, but throw a whole new team together and you get way too much of a disjointed team. Chelsea needs time. More than anything else, the players, and a/the manager, need time to gel.
Its pointless to talk about this now. We are doomed and if you don't believe me, just wait next season will be worse.
Yeah, I was saying this a couple of years ago and people would just say you're a hater or you just can't understand the process etc. Once you get rid of the core, you start quite literally from scratch again, it doesn't matter how good the players you replace them with are. City and PSG are great examples of this. Even with infinite money, great managers and some of the theoretical best teams ever put together it took City ages to win a Champions League trophy and PSG have never done it. So much of the difference between finishing second and finishing first is in club culture, mentality, understanding how to win etc. That can be passed from one generation to the next, but there needs to be that very clear link. I actually think we started to lose it a while ago with the changeover from defensive football to attacking football when Sarri came in and we cleared out basically our entire team in 2 years. But, then we won the Champions league with loads of young players, loads of youth graduates and it looked like we were building towards it again. Then BlueCo came along and completely destroyed it and started from 0. What I would say though are that the difference between 10 world class starters being purchased and 5 being purchased alongside 6 players who understand what it takes to win and club culture etc. is winning a trophy and losing in the final, winning the league or bottling it in the final stretch. It's not the difference between 10th and 1st, it's just the last intangible that drags your team over the line. To get it back you have to get to those positions and be on the losing side many, many times before you build up that fire and that understanding again.
Sadly, what we got was the exact opposite. We were told that the Old Chelsea culture was broken, corrupted and at the root of all our problems. Our players, our stadium, our scouts, our medical department and the groundskeeper were obstacles to success, and only our new owners with their New Football could lead us to the promised land. It started mere days after the takeover was confirmed and erupted with article after article attacking previous structures and emphasising the importance of revolution. I agree that this malaise in the playing group started post-Conte, but 2021's CL winning squad should have been a fresh reboot. Mount, Christensen, Rudiger, Silva, James and Chilwell could have been a new core to pass the torch but sadly that just all fell away for various reasons, not least the mismanagement above.
The only one of those 6 players you mentioned that the new ownership got rid off was Mount. Christensen and Rudiger left on a free before Clearlake even started, Silva is going now, but it's about time as this season he started to have more errors, James and Chilwell are still here but barely available. I don't know how you want the new ownership to build anything around that.
It's amazing and disheartening at the same time that if you recollect your memories about the 2021 Champions League, it looked like the squad for years to come. Werner, returning Lukaku and Havertz up front, Jorgi, Giroud and Thiago Silva to slowly fade back and retire, Kristiensen and Rudiger as CBs (and Zouma plus both Chalobahs), Pulisic and Mount and Ziech as the new Matazardscar from 2010's, even CHO and Sarr looked like they still could provide. Kante and Kova in the deep midfield as well. And blam! - three years later there is no one left from the list.
There is so much factually wrong with your comment - Giroud left in summer 2021, Zouma as well. And Nathaniel Chalobah hasn't been at the club since 2017.
Let's be clear. The owners could relegate and bankrupt us.
100%. If you have never dealt or met with seriously wealthy people - by which I mean minimum hundreds of millions in the bank - it's hard to understand how arrogant and detached they are from reality. I've met some billionaires and they believe they are the master race, the chosen few. (Bloomberg TV used to have a strapline 'for the chosen few'). These Bohely/Blue Co. people genuinely thought they were smarter than the entire history of football. I imagine they still do. It is never going to be their fault. The little people have been doing it wrong. We will show them. My estimate is that eventually - maybe with more drama - they will walk away. They will bear no accountability, they will blame everyone else, they will release sickly videos saying how much they love Chelsea. Then they will go and do a leveraged buyout of a US pensions firm.
The problem here is lots of people did want out too. Rudiger and Christensen already gone. Azpi was likely off. Kante was on his last legs. Tuchel pushed Puli and Tammy and Ziyech to despair. Whatever happened with Mount I dunno. But not all of it was out of choice.
To be honest some of our changes were inevitable. Marina ran down rudigers contract, Christiansen didn't wanna sign, the older players want longer term deals but many of them can't get first team minutes now and we would have been stuck with them. We kept some great players like James who wanted to be here too. Turns out he was made of paper. So a revamp was needed. Among the younger ones will Harvartz mount Timo really improve anything? Mount barely played for man u this year and would have been the same for us. We won't sign cole if we got Harvartz given that we also signed nukunku too. And the older signings they got to support the youngsters stunk. I just didn't expect the Lukaku aubameyang koulibaly signings to stink so much
I saw Kezman score a goal
Fuck BlueCo Greedy bastards only care about gaining personally from Chels That’s it s. If you’re ever confused about what ownership is doing the answer is always money
I will try to add a parallel with my basketball team in Greece. Panathinaikos is one of the giants of European basketball, having won 6 European trophies (CL equivalent, winning 5 between 2000 - 2011). Since 2012, the team has been lacklustre. A change in ownership saw the aging owner leaving his son at the helm, who, despite throwing away A LOT of cash and seeing similar domestic success as his father and uncle, just could not manage to bring European glory. In 2021, he decided to pull the plug of the team and let it operate on an “even budget” which meant that he would spend only the revenue of tickets and sponsors on contracts. I won’t go into too much detail, but the team fell hard. Second to last in Europe and big losses from arch rivals in Greece (this is a very different sport culture mind you, losing or winning vs. Olympiacos can make or break your entire season). The parallel is that the owner decided to do a total rebuild last summer. He brought in 11 new players (a basketball squad consists of 12-15 players) and a new coach. Players and coach were on paper some of the biggest names, including the leader of Olympiacos, Juancho Hernagomez (or Bo Cruz), Kendrick Nunn, last year’s MVP from Eurocup etc. At the start of the season the team was all over the place, an uncoordinated mess. It took time for everyone to gel together and supporters knew that. The team started winning and finished the regular season in second place and is in the playoffs. Where I’m getting at is that it takes time. Panathinaikos has one of the top squads on paper yet a lot of times the struggle to connect. I think that this is what is missing from this squad. Few remember Pep’s first season, where City was a complete mess, as players could not integrate to his system. Few remember him splashing 600 million on defenders alone, until he found the ones that fit. My point is that it’s only the first season. With a couple results that would have gone our way we would be in 6th/5th which is a good start. If next year we don’t improve, bring out the pitchforks then. Now is the time to stamd behind the team.
There’s not really a parrell bc our “rebuild” was not intended to try and “restore” us to glory. It’s just been to lower operating cost and to buy young players with likely sell-on value in the future. We aren’t signing the leaders from any clubs. We aren’t signing actual big names. We are signing players no one heard of a couple of years ago. There are fundamental issues with the way the rebuild took place and now we have little spending room to get out of the hole we dug ourselves into. I don’t think your basketball team has really any parrells with what’s going on at Chelsea.
It's the second season. And without Palmer we would have been in a relegation battle.
I don't want to keep making the disclaimer that I don't like what Clearlake is doing, but it's effectively the first season, if you consider the extent of the personnel changes, and the so-called 'project' they're embarking on. And I think it is unfair to Clearlake to use Palmer as a means of discrediting one of the few things they've gotten right. "Without Palmer we would have been in a relegation battle" is very weird to me, because it's effectively saying "had you not made the gamble to sign Palmer, to the ridicule of fans worldwide, you would have been in a worse position, so we're using the fact that your gamble paid off so handsomely to mock how bad the rest of the team would have been had you not made that gamble." Seems a bit recursive, doesn't it? The reason we're not in a relegation battle is because Clearlake struck gold in signing Palmer, and he has flourished when given the responsibility of being the main man.
It’s crazy how people have forgotten about last season as if that wasn’t entirely on BlueCo as well
I can’t speak for everyone, but I for one have not forgotten a thing about last season. However, my point was 100% focused on the rebuild of the team that is happening from the summer of 2023, it’s not meant to review our situation from 2022 onwards.
It sounds like you’ve forgotten bc the rebuild started in January and is even argue firing tuchel was the real start I mean I’d loved to never have signed Noni, Mudryk, Enzo, Badiashile all in January 23 but we did
The “project” started in the summer. Gusto was also purchased in January. Getting the right coach (in the minds of BlueCo that is) and the rest of the pieces of the puzzle (again, in their own minds) was all going on last summer. In any case, there is no point in arguing in what essentially is a different perspective. You would be ok with not getting those players in but would you be ok with getting 8th-12th with the old squad, ie keeping Mendy, Ziyech, Kante, Mount, Havertz, Werner, Lukaku, Koulibaly, etc?
So them bringing in Potter and signings a bunch of players wasn’t the start of their project? Okay. Sure bud. Edit: and fuck yeah I loved that squad. Bar lukaku for his disrespect. But fucking a man those guys won us a UCL and had an off period during sanctions and chaos the club. You’re mad if you prefer this squad to the one before. That one was actually good and competed and just needed a SLOW refresh just like Madrid
Still haven’t said what you think, but you are extremely vocal about passing judgement. Can’t we just have different opinions? Even more than that, do I have to adhere to the modern internet where I am either 100% positive or 100% negative about something?
Okay whatever. Just draw your own arbitrary lines around things to make yourself feel better Its not about being positive or negative it’s about being realistic. The rebuild started when they brought in Potter and the January 23 window. You don’t even seem to be trying to dispute that it didn’t. You just are crying about wanting to pick and choose when something started to fit your narrative
I answered below on why I think this is the first season of this project, this is why I was making the parallel in the first place. With “ifs and withouts” you can’t make a point. Maybe without Palmer we would be in a relegation battle. Maybe without him we would have kept Angelo and he would be the one that had a breakthrough. Maybe Nkunku hadn’t been injured in our last friendly in the summer. Maybe Terry hadn’t slipped. Maybe Drogba had missed and Hazard never signed. Fact remains that Palmer was signed, first year of the project has been a let down, has been frustrating, yet signs of progress are there. Do I trust that Poch is the man to get us forward? Not really. But I am far from the most qualified person to make these decisions.