New Year, new thinking, old problem

Picture: Sky Sports

So I start 2023 with a post about football. Sorry if you were expecting something erudite about rock and roll, but there’s plenty of that in the pipeline, I assure you. It’s just that things need to be said about my football club. And being a Monday, home of the occasional ‘Monday Moan’ (see posts passim), it might as well be now, even if today is only the second day of the new year.

There was hope that the World Cup, which ate through most of the final six weeks of the old year, would allow Graham Potter time to figure out what wasn’t happening at Chelsea. Prior to last Tuesday’s restorative 2-0 win over Bournemouth, the club had suffered three straight defeats in its previous Premier League outings, running up to the tournament in Qatar. Potter had said that he would use the international break to get his head around why. In fairness, it was probably the first opportunity he’d had to fully get under the skin of the team he’d been somewhat parachuted into following Thomas Tuchel’s abrupt sacking in September, barely a month into the new season. That meant Potter had a steep curve to attain, even if it was softened by conciliatory noises from Chelsea’s new owners about a “project” that would give him time. 

The Bournemouth result, which saw goals from Kai Havertz and Mason Mount, with Raheem Sterling displaying a contributory form that he’d barely shown since his summer move from Manchester City, gave some hope that Potter’s pledge before the game, that improvement was coming, would ring true. “We’ve had a challenging time, some ups, some downs, in terms of the previous year which is normal at any football club,” the head coach said during his pre-match comments. “But we want to stabilise, try and improve and make our supporters happy, because we know the last few weeks before the break weren’t nice for us. Results suffered, performances weren’t where we wanted them to be, and we have to do better than that.”

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The one negative in the Bournemouth result was the withdrawal of Reece James having put in a half during which he’d demonstrated, cruelly, what Chelsea had been missing during his absence due to a knee injury. When that injury occurred again, right in front of the dugout, a collective groan extended around Stamford Bridge. That was just how much difference James had made. If, then, you add his left-sided wingback counterpart Ben Chilwell to the injury list, a picture emerges of why Chelsea have looked pedestrian without the pair, marauding forward to cut in, or providing flank protection to a central defensive trio that includes the 38-year-old Thiago Silva. It’s worth noting that since the start of last season Chelsea have won 82% of the games James and Chilwell have started together, and lost just once. Given that both players have been injured for varying periods of that record, you have to wonder what could have been with them fully intact.

So, move on a few days to yesterday’s New Year’s Day visit to second-from-bottom Nottingham Forest, whose manager Steve Cooper knew exactly where to exploit weakness. The resulting 1-1 scoreline flattered Chelsea with, perhaps, the one bright spot being Raheem Sterling’s long overdue sixth goal out of 17 appearances. Full credit, then, to Cooper for inspiring his side into not lying down. But questions must be asked as to why Potter was unable to eek another three points out of a squad in which the club’s new owners invested an additional £270 million last summer. Word is there’s even more expenditure to come. Money, as we all know, doesn’t necessarily solve problems. 

“I think Potter needs time,” was the conclusion of Graeme Souness after the Forest game. “This is not a squad equipped to go and win big games of football. Their goal difference is plus-two.”. Which raises the obvious question: if not, what does £270 million buy you, then? Not a lot, it would seem. None of Chelsea’s summer purchases have exactly set the world alight.

What is emerging are doubts about co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali’s buying strategy, which has appeared more urgent largesse than tactical solution finding. £170 million of that spend went on defenders. By any measure of expectation, Kalidou Koulibaly (a £33 million buy from Napoli), Marc Cucurella (£56 million from Brighton) and Wesley Fofana (almost £70 million from Leicester - and has only made six appearances due to injury), should have made some difference. But, it would seem, no. Koulibaly was meant to resolve the departures of Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen, both of whose contracts had run down amid dissatisfaction with successive managers, and then exploited the vacuum caused by Roman Abramovich’s forced disposal of the club.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

Against Forest, Chelsea were exposed at the back. Playing a four, with Koulibaly and Silva flanked by club captain César Azpilicueta and Cucurella, Chelsea looked leaden through the middle, with Jorginho labouring despite loanee Denis Zakaria putting in a decent shift. As wingbacks, Azpiliqueta and Cucurella are no substitutes for James and Chilwell, either in terms of guile or agility. Which means more is expected from the midfield. But here questions must be asked about Jorginho’s viability. In turn, the forward line of Pulisic, Havertz and Sterling look somewhat anaemic, with the American blowing hot and cold (frustratingly, he was outstanding for the USA in Qatar) and the German still unsure of whether he is a false 9 or an actual 9. Hakim Zyech doesn’t seem to have Potter’s confidence as a starting option, despite an outstanding appearance for Morocco at the World Cup. That seemed to merely confirm that he wanted to remain in the shop window, because God knows he hasn’t appeared to be interested in playing for his club when he’s been given the chance.

What this all ladders up to is that Chelsea are, after all that outlay, lacking from front to back. Even if you factor in a lengthening injury list that includes N’Golo Kanté (who surely must be reaching the end of his contract and usefulness, anyway, given that he spends more time on the treatment table these days than a football pitch), the project must surely be about a wholesale blood transfusion rather than more purchases which essentially paper over cracks that have existed in the plasterwork for a long time. 

As one Twitter wag noted yesterday after the draw with Forest, Chelsea have burned through Antonio Conte, Maurizio Sarri, club legend Frank Lampard and Tuchel as managers in the last six years, but some of the same players that engendered their sacking are still on the books. A harsh assessment maybe, but it is perhaps why the appointment of RB Leipzig’s Christopher Vivell as technical director could be the most important signing of the Boehly era (replacing the American chairman himself who’d been fulfilling the role ad-interim). 

Maybe that will stem the apparently naive acquisitions of players like striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, bought in an act of transfer deadline day desperation, presumably in the belief that he could reconnect with former Borussia Dortmund manager Tuchel, only for the coach to be fired five days later. In fairness, Chelsea have been staffing up behind the scenes under the new ownership, especially within its much-vaunted academy, but the attention - and expectation - will always fall on the first team.

And so, we enter another January window. Received wisdom is that player signings at this time of year smack of shotgun wedding, and often end in disappointment (case in point: Fernando Torres). So far, the club has brought in 20-year-old Ivorian striker David Datro Fofana to cover for Armando Broca’s long-term injury, and central defender Benoît Badiashile has joined from Monaco for around £32 million. As is now the custom, Chelsea are being linked with just about every other player who performed with distinction at the World Cup in the belief that the Boehly-Clearlake chequebook contains endless blank pages.

This does bring the spotlight back to Graham Potter. Whether he gets time remains to be seen, but compared to his predecessors, the threat of a P45 isn’t as immediate under the new owners as they had been under Abramovich. But even that doesn’t insulate him. Potter’s challenge - which he hitherto hasn’t encountered in his managerial career - is to turn a squad that still contains Champions League-winning players from only May 2021 back into Top Four competitors. Which on yesterday’s evidence and today’s view of the Premier League table, in which Chelsea sit eighth, seems unlikely.

The impending period will, though, pile on the pressure. Potter’s next two games are against Manchester City - the first, at home in the league, the second, three days later, at the Etihad in the FA Cup. There’s little respite beyond that, either, with a trip down the Fulham Road to upbeat neighbours at Craven Cottage, before returning to Stamford Bridge for Crystal Palace, and then back on the road to Anfield, all before the January window shuts. No wonder fans are anxious. Some have become openly hostile to Potter, though these tend to be keyboard gobshites offering little more than Mauricio Pochettino’s name as an alternative, and who patently haven’t read the situation that the Chelsea coach found himself in when he drove up the A23 from Brighton to his new job in September.

Fresh blood might help - sorry, fresh blood should help - but the bottom line is that Chelsea have too many players who are, to varying degrees, underperforming in seemingly untouchable positions. Some might be doing so because of the players around them, while with others it’s because they simply lack the winning mentality required at the club. 

It’s often said that Chelsea have never been as good as the team that won trophies repeatedly under José Mourinho with a spine of serial winners - and leaders - that ran from goal (Petr Čech), through central defence (John Terry), central midfield (Lampard) to the front (Didier Drogba). The club has, of course, won silverware since that quartet’s retirements, but in its current line-up, it’s hard to identify where the strengths are. Capabilities are there, no doubt, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Chelsea are currently a collection of individuals. But there’s something patently missing.

It doesn’t need to be found immediately, though. A period of purdah from open-top buses might allow the club to re-establish the imperiousness of the early Abramovich era, and the success that had eluded it in the preceding 34 years. The trouble is, success is a very demanding mistress. And a lucrative one, too. Which might tip the weight of expectation on Graham Potter’s shoulders against him in the months ahead.

With 20/20 hindsight...

I'm not going to rewrite my own history. Frank Lampard's removal in January still hurts (see posts passim). But what Thomas Tuchel produced on Saturday in Porto, out of the same group of players who’d started the season under Lampard, was a tactical masterclass. The result, a 17th major trophy - and for the second time, Europe’s most prestigious - under Roman Abramovich’s ownership suggests that the philosophy of silverware over managerial longevity works. 

To those of a principled nature, this apparently mercenary need for cups might sit uncomfortably with a more purist, romantic view of football. But Saturday’s win over the even more lavishly resourced Manchester City, whose owner even paid for the club’s fans to be flown to and from Portugal, revealed something of the notion that it’s not always about money. That might sound rich from the fan of a club where money has, actually, bought quite a lot. But money didn’t buy that victory - directly - it was Tuchel’s tactics, plus Pep Guardiola’s decision not to play start with Fernandinho and Rodri, and add a little bit of free stardust from the Chelsea Academy. 

One genuinely satisfying outcome of the Champions League Final was the sight of Mason Mount and Reece James making such outstanding contributions to the win - the former with his midfield-splitting pass to Kai Havertz for the goal, the latter for his robust maturity in preventing City’s fearsome attack from clawing back. You could also cite Andreas Christensen and Christian Pulisic, both of whom have experience of Chelsea’s youth system. Havertz’s goal was most satisfying, simply because the £71 million signing had taken a while to settle in the side since his arrival last summer, with a huge price tag on his shoulders. A nasty bout of COVID-19 didn’t help, either. Perplexingly, he’s still not the out-and-out forward Chelsea so desperately need. 

Timo Werner, bless him, once again demonstrated how a full season and the injection of a fellow German to manage him still hasn’t done anything to improve his finishing. A return of 12 goals in 51 games (and just two in 23) over all competitions is by any measure woeful for a striker, especially one who arrived from Leipzig last summer, having bagged 28 strikes out of 34 Bundesliga games alone. So with the sadly outcast Tammy Abraham - another youth product - and Olivier Giroud destined for pastures new, if Chelsea are to close the gap with City in the Premier League, Werner either needs to dramatically improve his lethality, or Mr. Abramovich has to get his cheque book out again.

The youth element of Chelsea’s make-up has been the core of the club narrative over the last two seasons. When Frank Lampard took over, he had little option but to play the youngsters, thanks to the UEFA transfer ban in place. His existing familiarity with players like Mount, as well as the history of assistants Joe Edwards and Jody Morris working with the Academy, meant their progression added chapters to the fairy tale. And thus it continued when Tuchel took over, though he fell back on experience and maturity to begin with, probably as a safety net, before increasingly seeing what Mount and James could do. The same applied to Ben Chilwell, who’d joined from Leicester last summer, but seemed to take a while to win the new coach over, with the unreliable (in my opinion) Marcos Alonso getting the nod over him. 

It would, however, be too easy to make Saturday night’s victory a romantic one about youngsters alone: just look at the shift the near-32-year-old captain César Azpilicueta put in, or the 36-year-old Thiago Silva, before his groin gave out, or even Antonio Rüdiger. And just how magnificent was the diminutive N’Golo Kanté, who turned 30 in March, placing him in the category of players Chelsea likes to offer limited-length contracts from now on (but would be utterly insane not to tie him down, based on the form he’s shown this season). Kanté was everywhere against City, and while it’s become something of a cliche to refer to him as two players in one, he was, once more, more than just a holding player, but frequently the origin of Chelsea’s forward runs, attacks that exposed Guardiola’s midfield folly.

Here, then, is where I run the risk of revisionism. Chelsea were in some trouble in January when Lampard - forever a club legend - was fired. It’s possible that they could have dug themselves out of it, but heads had noticeably dropped. I still can’t reconcile my thoughts: could Frank have benefitted from a more experienced director of football to manage him? Or was it just too soon, ultimately, to be managing the club? John Terry beware, if so. 

Thomas Tuchel is not naive. He will know full well of the managerial toll that has come with the successes of the Abramovich era. Saturday’s result was the third occasion Chelsea have won a title at the end of a season where the manager has changed midway through. Maybe the Russian owner knows what he's doing, after all. His instincts for pulling the trigger at the right time seem uncannily sharp, but it’s hard not to wonder why those instincts weren’t apparent when some appointments were made in the first place. Avram Grant, André Villas-Boas, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Maurizio Sarri, even José Mourinho (twice)  and Lampard himself were all, to some extent, experiments that failed, requiring Guus Hiddink or the detested (but successful) Rafa Benítez to be parachuted in. 

Tuchel took over an increasingly listless team, instilled some defensive fortitude into them and plugged the leaks. It’s likely that he will now be offered to extend his somewhat tentative 18-month contract. If nothing else earns it, the ‘cup with the big ears’ should do so (not that Chelsea winning it helped Roberto Di Matteo - appointed in March 2012, fired the following November). Tuchel’s tactical victory on Saturday over Guardiola has, at least, quelled the disquiet over Chelsea’s end to the domestic season, with their only-just fourth place in the Premier League, having lost games at crucial moments, and Leicester’s convincing victory in the FA Cup Final which denied Tuchel his only other chance of securing silver.

But taken into another context, along the way, Tuchel has now outsmarted Guardiola three times in six weeks, which poses the enticing prospect of Chelsea mounting a credible challenge to City next term. In the Premier League, Tuchel arrested any further decline and pushed Chelsea back into European contention, just. He took them into an FA Cup Final. And - most impressively - he masterminded superb knockout-round victories over Atlético Madrid, Saturday night’s hosts, Porto, Real Madrid and then City. It’s not been lost on commentators that the near-deity Pep Guardiola’s desire to win Europe’s biggest prize continues, while Thomas Tuchel has achieved it in only five months. He’s not the Special One, but on Saturday’s evidence, he is pretty special. Wish I’d known that when I wagged the finger of doom in January and said that Chelsea should be careful what they wished for. I mean, what do I know?

Time for a Monday Moan? Not just yet

Picture: BBC Sport

Long-standing readers of this blog might recall a tradition that set in during José Mourinho's brief final season as Chelsea manager. After signing a new contract on August 7th, 2015 (which, incidentally, would have expired only last year), Mourinho oversaw a run of games that saw Chelsea pick up just 11 points from their first 12 Premier League fixtures, and exit the League Cup to Stoke by October. By December 17th, when Mourinho left Stamford Bridge for a second time ("by mutual consent"), the club had lost nine of its 16 league matches. Chelsea were in something of a death spiral and, at the moment of the Portuguese's departure, were one place above the relegation zone.

Along the way, my posts became exponentially more exasperated, to the extent that, like my very first missive in the blogosphere (a rant about England's exit from the 2010 World Cup, written the morning after), I established a history of letting rip on the first working day of the week. During Mourinho's progressive denouement at Chelsea, my Facebook updates to promote such posts became known as The Monday Moan.

That I mention this today, the Monday after Chelsea lost yesterday - and didn’t lose well - is something of a coincidence: it is too soon, two games into the new season, to get into a cycle of misery, especially as they won their first, last Monday, against Brighton, and they were, yesterday, playing the newly-crowned English league champions. But this is what football is about. A bad result at the weekend - even one as gloriously sunny and summery as this one was - is all it takes to start the week in a fug. But (and here’s where a football fan’s acute sense of denial instantly kicks in) there is need for some - some - perspective.

To summarise, Chelsea, with their expensively assembled, £230 million of summer acquisitions, were facing Liverpool at the Bridge in only their second competitive game of the season. In some respects, a tough break to meet last season’s champions so soon, but then to think that way is to already take on a defeatist view. Chelsea, after all, did finish fourth - an unlikely outcome, given the challenges of a transfer ban and relying heavily on youth last season. But that shouldn't necessarily mean that meeting Liverpool is anything less than a peer encounter. Chelsea-Liverpool has always been one of the fixtures I’ve attended religiously, dating back to the late 1970s, when the Merseysiders were imperious and the Londoners were in the mire of financial crises. That, to the 11-year-old me, was less apparent. What drew me in was that these two teams represented the classic football confrontation: the blues and the reds. Human Subbuteo. And thus it has continued for 40-plus years, all through the storied (and well-documented - see my post from June, Red Rain) history of encounters between the teams. 

So, then, yesterday. A cagey start by both sides saw Liverpool increase their presence, pressing Chelsea high and clearly setting out to test a largely unchanged defence, their Achilles heel all last season. That approach won out on the stroke of half time when Andreas Christensen lost his head and rugby-tackled Sadio Mané to the ground as he charged through on goal, to be rightfully dismissed after a VAR review of the initial yellow card. No one, least of all Christensen, should have had any complaints. After the break, Liverpool came out to face ten-man Chelsea with renewed, ominous purpose, Mané proving the tormentor twice, scoring within five minutes of the interval, and again, four minutes later. Perhaps Chelsea could be credited with keeping the scoreline at 0-2 for the remaining 35 minutes of play, but it was the nature of those two conceded goals that require the attention.

That £230 million has mostly been spent on attacking players, and given Timo Werner’s exciting pace (and a couple of decent chances yesterday he’ll regret), and the gradual introduction of the £71 million Kai Havertz, Chelsea could have one of the most fearsome attacking line-ups in the Premier League, given all the other options in Frank Lampard’s toolbox. But, as has been recanted verbatim over recent months, it’s at the back that changes are needed, and needed fast. Ben Chilwell, the left-back Chelsea coveted for some time, is yet to make his debut due to injury, meaning the defensively weak wingback Marcos Alonso continues to have put his lack of defensive pace and positioning on display. So it proved with Mané’s first goal, the result of Liverpool sending the Senegalese winger, plus Keïta, Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Firmino into the final third, baffling Chelsea’s defenders (now with Tomori replacing Christensen). Firmino beat Alonso to cut the ball across for Mané to head into the goal. For once, Chelsea’s Kepa Arrizabalaga couldn’t be blamed, directly. For what happened next, he could.

They say that if you’re already in a hole it’s a good idea to stop digging, but Arrizabalaga has clearly not heard this adage. As if he needed to add to the growing list of calamities, what seemed like a bread-and-butter clearance out to Jorginho was intercepted too easily by Mané, who simply poked it into the net with the casual ease of someone sweeping a tin can out of the way.

Almost to a newspaper, every back page today has said the exact same thing: Édouard Mendy cannot arrive from Rennes soon enough. We’re told that the goalkeeper's £20 million signing is imminent, but on this display from Chelsea's current stopper, Frank Lampard’s first duty this morning was probably to bang on Marina Granovskaia’s office door with a demand to know where she currently is with the Mendy deal, and to even offer a few quid of his own money to tip the balance of any last-minute wrangling.

Taking a step back, Chelsea weren’t helped yesterday by reticence. It was almost as if they were intimidated from the outset by Jurgen Klopp’s champions. They certainly allowed Liverpool’s high press to get the better of them, meaning that the Londoners’ defence was, once again, thin ice waiting to crack. The suggestion, here is one of a gulf in class, but when you look at where Chelsea have spent their money this summer, I genuinely think that they’ve got what it takes to compete within the top four. But it will take time. The veteran Thiago Silva, signed from PSG, has yet to make his debut, like Chilwell, meaning that the obvious weaknesses in defence have yet to be strengthened. Havertz is only two games in, and while Werner is looking sharp, he’s still, understandably, getting his timing right. With the other newbie, Hakim Ziyech, injured along with Christian Pulisic, arguably, the natural heir to Eden Hazard, Chelsea’s expensive new line-up is yet to take shape. Lampard, though, for all his exalted status amongst the club’s fans, also needs to learn better of what to do with these assets. One criticism of last season was that he wasn’t able to settle on an optimum defensive line-up, and that appears to have continued into this season. None of his central defenders appear rooted in the role (with Antonio Rudiger not even in yesterday’s squad), so with a risky goalkeeper and a never-the-same line-up in front of him, the inconsistencies have been laid bare.

Ever the diplomat, Lampard tried to put a supportive arm around his first-choice keeper. Accepting the Spaniard’s “clear mistake” for Liverpool’s second goal, he said after the match that: “We have to keep working, Kepa has to keep working.” Though acknowledging that it had been two games out of two that Kepa had dropped a clanger (conceding Leandro Trossard's goal last Monday against Brighton), he said: “Players need support, particularly from myself. I give that to all the players. Kepa has to keep working, nobody tries to make mistakes in football, it is the nature of the game. You have to be strong, you keep going and that is where he is at." Quite what Lampard’s mood is like privately is up for debate.

What he does know, or at least should know, as he opened up training this morning at Cobham, is that all the spending on top European attacking talent will amount to nothing if his defence continues to leak goals like they did last season. And, at risk of sounding ungrateful, the addition of just two new defenders (well, I say ‘new’, but Silva is now 35), means that more, much more, needs to be done with what Lampard already has in the department. In Reece James and Fikayo Tomori, for example, two youngsters of genuine promise, but still with much to learn. Stability - rooted in a goalkeeper who knows what he’s doing and can command those in front of him - is essential. That won’t come quickly, or easily.

But, to step back a bit further, there's a reason why I'm not yet ready to reinstate the Monday Moan. Yesterday's game was a tough schooling for Lampard, and from the one club Chelsea fans would have preferred not to have received it from (well, maybe the other club, if you include Tottenham). Two games in, it's too soon to press the panic button. For context, go back to 2016 and Antonio Conte's first season in charge. By September 11th, Chelsea's early season wins had been arrested by a 2-2 draw with Swansea. Then came back-to-back defeats - to Liverpool and Arsenal, the latter a humiliating 3-0 reverse. Conte had seen enough and switched to the 3-4-3 wingback system that would propel the team to Premier League champions eight months later, and with a 13-point margin over runners-up Spurs. The point here is that it really is too soon to moan, even if, this morning, it's fully justified.