Forget Blue Monday, it’s Blue Sunday I’m worrying about

© Simon Poulter 2023

The ascent to the seat I’ve occupied at Stamford Bridge for 26 years is an arduous one, but the view is worth it once you get up there. The decision I made in 1997 with a mate of mine to take out season tickets in the East Stand Upper section, just below the main commentary box, was a sound one. Like the media who sit a few rows behind us, we have the perfect vantage point, sitting just to one side of the centre line. 

The one downside - well, increasing downside - is that it requires a lung-busting hike up several knee replacement-inducing sets of stairs dating back to the late 1970s when the East Stand was built. It is now the oldest stand in the stadium, and constructed at tremendous cost to the pre-Abramovich (and pre-Ken Bates) Chelsea Football Club, which was almost bankrupted by the venture. However, I’m not as young as I was in 1997. But there is, still, a latent desire to make that climb “every other Saturday” (or whenever the Premier League and its television partners deem games should be played). Right now, though, it feels like some form of ritualised torture.

Chelsea are in crisis. There is no other way of looking at it. Perhaps the mist of optimism veiled the view in my last post on the club’s fortunes, but since then, I’ve witnessed back-to-back defeats to Manchester City and the God-awful nightmare that was last Thursday’s away fixture to Fulham (in which loanee João Félix made a genuinely refreshing debut, only to then get red carded, and fellow loan player Denis Zaharia - one of the other rare bright spots in the squad - withdrew through injury. Chelsea lost 2-1 to the noisy neighbours).

Picture: Chelsea FC

I’ve never been one to join sack-the-manager pile-ons, especially as high head coach turnover at this football club has only ever been an irritating carrot-and-stick incentive to successors, but you have to question whether Graham Potter is, now, the man to dig Chelsea out of the hole they’re in. It’s not, though, his fault. The trouble is, it rarely is the manager’s. 

For too long, Chelsea bosses have borne the brunt for players with too much power, too much money and too little incentive to produce their best for the team. Potter, though, is yet to display the ability, charisma and sheer strength of personality to turn this predicament around. Something needs to happen to move Chelsea out of the mid-table moribundity they’re settling into, despite the vast outlay by the club’s new owners since taking over last summer.

On that front, clearly, Potter cannot be blamed for players like Kalidou Koulibaly and Marc Cucurella being hopelessly at the wrong club (even if the latter played for Potter at Brighton). Nor can he be blamed for the serial underperformer that is Hakim Zyech, or the enigma that is Kai Havertz, who has now laboured for too long leading the line. It wasn’t Potter, either, who bought Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, when anyone else would have steered well clear of the Gabonese skipper, ingloriously ejected by an Arsenal at a time when they could least afford to lose him, but clearly had to. 

Picture: Chelsea FC

What, too, has Jorginho really contributed to the midfield, in seasons-numerous? Nowhere near his reputation, that’s for sure. And Kepa, bought for a £72 million record goalkeeping transfer fee, then usurped by Edouard Mendy because of poor performance, to be restored to the team only to regress back into the indifferent form. And, lastly, there is dear old César Azpilicueta, the club captain. He tries his best, but at 33, has legs that just can’t keep up. Yes, it’s the manager’s job to get the best out of these players, but you’d have to argue that even a coach as sainted as Pep Guardiola can’t work miracles.

The Fulham game highlighted a malaise that has beset Chelsea, in one form or another, for some time: spirit. On paper, the club isn’t bereft of talent but it does lack leadership. That’s not just down to Azpiliqueta or the bench, but highly rewarded players who, when their backs are up against the wall, apply some gumption. Easy to say, I know, but it seems equally easy to just not put in a shift, drive home to that mansion in Oxshott in the custom-fit 150-grand G-Wagon, and fire up a cigar with that week’s wad of notes.

According to the Daily Telegraph, however, change is coming. It may not be immediate, but the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital consortium that owns Chelsea is planning to drain the swamp, and clear out players who’ve been allowed to build up in the squad over successive transfer windows, but not perform. Hopefully, even, one or two known to have undermined management authority. 

Against the prevailing mood from the terraces, Potter’s job is safe for now (and it was noted that some fans outside Craven Cottage on Thursday night were making it plain that the squad is the problem, not the head coach). I’m still not 100% convinced that Potter is the man for the job, but in fairness, he may not have been given a chance - even this far into the season. Injuries, too, have been punishing - something no manager can mitigate, whatever his strategic and tactical tools. 

A squad refresh could certainly help, with the Telegraph suggesting that a new wage structure might be introduced to reset an inconsistent spend during the Abramovich era. The thinking might be to put players on more or less the same wages for their age and experience, and build new and lucrative causes into their bonus agreements for meeting individual and team objectives. An interesting development if so.

That, though, is for the future. Potter’s problem, however, is here and now. The mood tomorrow afternoon at Stamford Bridge for the fixture against Crystal Palace is likely to be sulphurous. And if it isn’t, it will still be a struggle to get a raise out of even the most boisterous mobs of the Matthew Harding end. 

Potter needs results to change the mood, which makes the Palace game a must-win. The numbers don’t lie - Chelsea are currently in their worst run of form since 1996 and lie 10th in the Premier League, well off the pace for Champions League requalification. Exits in both the FA and League cups to Manchester City means that their only hope of silverware this season is the Champions League itself, which seems only a distant prospect to the most optimistic of supporters.

With the transfer window still open, there is talk of yet more signings to address the injury crisis, with PSV Eindhoven’s Noni Madueke along with Borussia Monchengladbach’s Marcus Thuram being considered to inject some urgency into an otherwise anaemic Chelsea attack, one in which even the lively Mason Mount has looked lethargic. But with each new name linked to the club, the belief is that it is committing the same mistakes they’ve made in successive seasons - buying more players without a plan of what they can do and where they will fit. 

As I wrote in my last post on this subject, last summer’s splurge on £170 million-worth of defenders has so far looked downright foolish, when considering the performances of Cucurella and Koulibaly, and the long-term injury of Wes Fofana, who barely played for the club before heading to the treatment centre.

Picture: Chelsea FC

For Potter, even the most tribal, antagonistic observer of football must show some sympathy. It’s not, though, what he wants: “I can’t sit here and say that things are improving when the results are like they are,” he said during his press conference yesterday. “We do know more about the club, more about the players, a lot more about what we need to get the club back to where it could be, where it should be. But at the moment, it’s not there. Lots of things have happened over a period of time that manifests itself into the situation. We have to make sure we act well going forward, but at the moment it’s tough to see any light, it’s tough to see any green shoots because we’re still suffering from defeats.”

The injuries - both existing and new - have felt like the feet being dragged from beneath him, especially the loss of Reece James on his return to the first team against Nottingham Forest. “It’s almost like, ‘Back to the drawing board’,” Potter said of all the injuries that continue to rack up. “It felt like taking one step, like you’re making progress watching João Félix, then all of a sudden, whoosh, he’s not here for three matches. That’s where we’ve been.”

The pressure on Potter for tomorrow’s Palace game is palpable, but then his opposite number, Patrick Viera, is looking at a run of four defeats out of five. A win over could move them level with Chelsea on points. Even if Potter’s job is not immediately at stake, psychologically, a lot is. One win from eight for a club with Chelsea’s most recent history is not only bad, it’s hard to actually remember when it was last quite so bad.

A postscript to this is that the day after tomorrow is ‘Blue Monday’, so named as it sits furthest between paydays, post-Christmas credit card statements are arriving and (of particular pain for me), HMRC self-assessment tax bills are due. On top of that, Britain seems to be stuck in a permanent weather pattern of wind and rain. T-Bone Walker might have sung “They call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday is just as bad“, but potentially, Sunday could be much, much worse.

Bored! Bored! Bored! Bored! Bored!

Those of you of a certain age and dispensation will recall the final episode of The Young Ones, which finds the Scumbag College quartet in the garden, their finals over, and numbed with boredom. 

To break the slump, Ade Edmondson’s Vyvyan comes out of the back door, swinging a cricket bat and shouting “Bored! Bored! Bored! Bored! Bored!”, before cartoonishly battering Rik Mayall about the head, rhythmically accompanied by more shouts of “Bored!”. I know how he feels.

When Lockdown I occurred last March, Britain was on the cusp of an agreeable spring that became a glorious summer. The tedium of house arrest was, for me at least, kept at bay by - in no particular order - a new job, a garden, blue skies, the absence of commercial aircraft and the sound of birdsong. By the time Lockdown II arrived in October, Christmas was already in sight and there were things to do. The lifting on restrictions six weeks later enabled a partial return to the things that felt like freedom: sitting somewhere other than your home for a coffee; the simple pleasure of shopping; and, in my case in particular, a return to the discipline of swimming three or four times a week.

Lockdown III already feels different. Even after just two weeks. I’m not going to question its wisdom - perhaps we should never have come out of lockdown in December, given the state we are now in. But the weeks ahead are, I’ll readily admit, not looking good for mental wellbeing. When the highlight of my weekend is an arduous visit to the dentist, and a welcome opportunity to interact, in person, with someone I neither live with or work with, you know things are bleak. I’m now at a stage when I’m clinging to excursions to Waitrose and our local Italian deli, which sells salads and coffee at its front door, as opportunities to change the vista. Travel documentaries now provide release rather than an aspirational glimpse of places to go when this thing is over. I’ve now stopped reading the weekend holiday supplements, such is the cruelty of seeing pictures of idyllic beaches, swimming pools and even city centres we won't be able to visit for a second year running.

A few years ago I decided to have therapy. Now, before you start thinking that I’ve gone all 'Hollywood victim' with this, it was simply a measure I thought might be useful, rather than a response to any episode. I’d just moved to Paris, started a new job that later became an even more intense one, I’d split up with my then-girlfriend, and I was contemplating my ageing parents’ health. So, if Tony Soprano could confer with Dr. Melfi as a central part of his narrative, what harm would come to me in seeking a friendly ear? 

I’d be hard pushed to say, conclusively, that therapy ‘cured’ me of whatever I felt the need to talk about, but one thing came out of it that has stayed with me ever since: freedom. Early on, we discovered that seeing planes in the sky, presumably heading off somewhere, made me yearn for escape. Travel became my escape, and living in France and working for an international company meant that I was regularly fulfilling my wish. But, now I think of it, living in the heart of Paris and with a Métro station right outside the front door, I had one of the greatest cities in the world at my disposal.

In fact, on the return journey from those Saturday morning sessions near the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, I would catch a bus that, vaguely, seemed to be going in a westerly direction back to the 6th arrondissement where I lived. Without anything in particular to do on a Saturday, those bus journeys through the districts north of the Seine were, of themselves, not spectacular, but at the same time, provided fascinating snapshots of Parisian street life and neighbourhoods going about their business, queuing for the boulangerie or discussing politics while waiting to buy the weekend cut of beef. 

There’s nothing, I suppose, that stops me doing that now, except that meandering bus journeys are out of the question during lockdown, meaning that a good long walk is all that’s left. It’s fine, especially when you interrupt it with a takeaway coffee at the midpoint, but a meagre ration nonetheless. I was deeply envious of Boris, last week, allegedly getting out on his bike for a seven-mile trip from Downing Street to the Olympic Park. Yes, I know that political conveniences dictate that he was breaching the spirit of what we’re all supposed to be observing, but I couldn’t help feeling somewhat approving. Assuming he rode the seven miles via surface streets, and didn’t have his Plod detail drop him off, he would have sailed through the City and the East End on his way to Stratford, riding through some of London’s most historic parts. It may not be the capital’s most salubrious district, but it would have been somewhere else. And that’s what I’m missing right now.