Now you’ve got to make it work: the challenge awaiting Graham Potter

Picture: Chelsea FC

The third Monday of January has come to be known as ‘Blue Monday’ on account of being the furthest point between paydays, it’s around the time most people (including former chancellors) have to pay their self-assessment tax bills, Christmas credit card bills land on doormats, and if you’re struggling with Dry January, you’re at peak abstinence pain.

January, on the other hand, for Chelsea Football Club seems to be an opportunity to splurge more money on solving squad deficiencies that weren’t addressed during the previous summer window. That, at least, appears to be the conclusion following the closing of yet another January transfer period, and one in which the club has committed an eye-watering £300 million-plus on reinforcements to Graham Potter’s resolutely tenth-place side.

The first month of the year hasn’t always been a happy hunting ground for Chelsea. For every Olivier Giroud, Nemanja Matic, Gary Cahill or Branislav Ivanovic, there’s been a Fernando Torres, Maniche, Ross Barkley and Juan Cadrado. Even Mo Salah and Kevin de Bruyne didn’t work out after they arrived mid-season.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

All of which raises questions over how the incoming Mykhailo Mudryk (for £88.5 million), Benoit Badiashile (£33 million), David Datro Fofana (£8.6 million), Andrey Santos (£12m), João Félix (loan costing £15 million a week), Noni Madueke (£30.5 million), Malo Gusto (£26 million), teenager Jimmy-Jay Morgan and, the coup de grâce, Enzo Fernández (left) for a staggering, British record-setting £106.8 million. Collectively, together with last summer’s signings, they bring the outlay by new club owners Todd Boehly and his Clearlake Capital partners to more than £500 million.

If the summer spree seemed cavalier and even unstructured, the January splurge seems, on paper at least, to be even more random. On top of that, questions are being asked as to how the club has been able to get away with it, given Financial Fair Play rules. The application of amortisation means that Mudryk’s cost would be effectively valued at only £11 million a year over the course of his eight-and-a-half-year deal. However, the risk with that is whether Chelsea would get eight and a half seasons out of the Ukrainian, given the risk of career-impacting injuries or, simply, a decline in form.

The more immediate danger, however is what Graham Potter does with his expensively assembled new squad. More than one Twitter wag has made the observation that it’s been like giving a Lamborghini Aventador to a 17-year-old learner driver as a replacement for his second-hand Vauxhall Corsa. A harsh assessment, perhaps (not to mention patronising towards Brighton & Hove Albion), but Potter is yet to prove himself at a club of Chelsea’s supposed elite status (based on its achievements in the Premier League era). Let’s not forget that £300 million was spent last summer on signings that Potter has had to bed down, after being parachuted in to replace Thomas Tuchel. And yet the side is still languishing mid-table with little immediate prospect of them making up the ground needed to get into Champions League places for next season.

The one thing we might, optimistically, surmise from the eye-watering outlay committed by the Boehly-Clearlake consortium is that there is a ‘project’ behind it. As one of my friends noted on social media, it’ll either end well, or end spectacularly badly. Todd Boehly didn’t become the billionaire he is by placing bets on assets like the LA Dodgers (in which he owns 20%) and the LA Lakers (27%) without some business sense. It’s not science to suggest this - and certainly not based on any inside knowledge - but maybe there is method in the apparent madness at Chelsea. On top of the player acquisitions, Boehly has also strengthened the club’s technical side, with Paul Winstanley brought in from Brighton & Hove Albion (adding to a stream of talent moving up the A23 to west London) and technical director Christopher Vivell joining from RB Leipzig. More leadership talent will be in post by this summer.

But back to Potter: money has been spent on strengthening his options, in particular adding to what has been a painfully anaemic attack, and reinforcing a squad dangerously depleted by injuries. Getting Chelsea scoring goals again has to be Potter’s priority, though his work isn’t yet done in shoring up the defence. When Tuchel took over from Frank Lampard at the beginning of 2021, Chelsea were in a similar state as to where they are now, heading in the wrong direction in the Premier League, and with one or two supposedly senior players effectively downing tools. Tuchel built back up from the back, restored morale and ended his first half-season with the European Cup in his hands. Potter has, in recent matches, started to see signs of consistency in defence, with veteran Thiago Silva bringing newcomer Benoit Badiashile on to produce a couple of clean sheets. But just 29 points at the beginning of February - just 14 more than bottom-placed Southampton, and 31 behind Arsenal - is a dismal return on the season so far.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The hope is that Mudryk, Madueke, Fofana and Félix (when he returns from the suspension incurred by an insane red card on his debut) will build on their goal scoring exploits elsewhere, and that Fernández will justify his fee by recreating the dazzling form he showed for Argentina at the World Cup to reinvigorate a pedestrian midfield. But all that does put the onus on Potter. 

With a squad of 30 players, which includes the injured likes of Reece James and Ben Chillwell, soon returning from absence, and Hakim Zyech, whose move to Paris Saint-Germain fell through last night at the last minute due to a clerical error, the coach’s work will be well and truly cut out. 

Not that he’d been enduring an easy ride since being appointed abruptly in September. Again, we must return to the thinking that there is a long-term plan: Potter noted before Christmas that he was still working out his best team. That might sound dangerous for a head coach at Chelsea to make, but in fairness, he had been hired after the season had begun, would not have had a chance to work with the squad in pre-season, and had also largely inherited a team with roots in that assembled by managers as far back as Maurizio Sarri and Antonio Conte. 

The six-week World Cup break, he said, afforded him the opportunity to reassess. Judging by last month’s resumption of league hostilities, it’s clear that whatever Potter concluded had not yet been implemented. There were glimmers of improvement, however, in Chelsea’s last league meeting, against Liverpool two weeks ago, but it wasn’t lost on anyone that, even with a better performance from Potter’s team, this was essentially a mid-table clash between a pair of - on current form - mediocre teams. 

Mediocre will not be the expectation now the season’s spending has finished and Graham Potter has half a billion pounds worth of new players at his disposal. Even allowing for a ‘project’ at the club, he’ll be expected to produce a return on that investment, even if trophies are now beyond Chelsea’s reach, an unlikely run to the Champions League Final at Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium notwithstanding. And that requires a plan, and not just an unshuffled pack of very expensive Top Trumps cards.