Shutting the window...£1 billion later

Picture: Chelsea FC

It still strikes me as absurd that the new Premier League season is almost a month old and yet, even as late as last night, teams were still doing business before the transfer window shut. This summer’s spend has exceeded £2 billion, and it doesn’t fill me with that much pride that my own club has contributed significantly to that outlay.

Since the Boehly-Clearlake consortium took over Chelsea last summer, it has spent around a billion pounds on new players, some of whom haven’t even made it to a second season, drawing question marks over the scattergun strategy of purchases that certainly marked the 2022 summer window, and continued in January this year.

With Mauricio Pochettino taking over as head coach in July (having been closely consulted in the weeks leading up to him starting work), Chelsea’s summer transfer activity has, at first glance, looked more purposeful, with many of the badly needed positions filled. Looked at from a higher level – with 10 players coming in, and 21 senior squad members offloaded, the club has undergone a complete oil change, to the extent that the only players remaining from the pre-takeover Abramovich era are Thiago Silva, Ben Chilwell, newly installed club captain Reece James, Trevoh Chalobah and reserve goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli. Oh, and Malang Sarr who, embarrassingly, Pochettino didn’t seem to be aware of when asked about by journalists this week.

If it wasn’t clear before, it should be abundantly apparent now that the player transfusion has been deliberate: capitalise on the net-loss sale of homegrown players like Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and, last night, Callum Hudson-Odoi, and focus on rebuilding around youth – on which Pochettino’s reputation has been built – with players signed for six, seven and even eight-year contracts, with the costs amortised over those periods to lower Financial Fair Play exposure as rules currently apply. 

That, though, is the positive spin: the negative is that somehow Boehly’s spending – which in buying Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo has twice broken British transfer records – Chelsea’s seemingly limitless spree on the brightest young talents around has seen little limit.

Moisés Caicedo
Picture: Chelsea FC

Whether it has been to any good remains to be seen: since 12 August, Chelsea have won one, drawn one and lost one in the Premier League with their expensively assembled squad, while at the same time seen their injury list pile up to 11 – effectively a complete team – with the need for further reinforcements as a result. The latest is 21-year-old Cole Palmer from Manchester City, something of a fringe player under Pep Guardiola but seemingly highly regarded by Chelsea’s talent acquisition experts looking to augment Pochettino’s attacking options further.

The logic to most of the acquisitions is not in doubt, nor the decision to part company with academy-developed and therefore marketable players. Getting rid of ineffective and expensive overheads like Kai Havertz, Romelu Lukaku, Hakim Zyech and Christian Pulisic will have lowered the wage bill, allowing the club to bring in players in their late teens and early twenties on smaller salaries, their exorbitant transfer fees spread over the longer period of their extended contracts.

Graphic: Sky Sports

Whether, though, this approach will keep Premier League and UEFA investigators happy is another matter entirely. In the aftermath of Roman Abramovich’s sanctioning there was a very real chance that Chelsea could have folded, especially as negotiations between the Government and the consortium ran into issues at the 11th hour. The Fair Play aspect does mean that the £1 billion spend since is a calculated risk by Todd Boehly and his partners.

Some will say the risk is worth it, given how phase two of the “project” – this summer’s clearout and subsequent refresh – has brought in players like Caicedo and Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson. Pochettino’s new broom approach has also appeared to restore last summer’s marquee signing Raheem Sterling to his best, with Caicedo’s arrival freeing up Fernández to look more like the £107 million he was bought for.

With no European football this season and expectations around a largely entirely new squad taking time to bed in alleviating some of the pressure on Pochettino, he has a unique platform on which to build. It’s hard to judge which has been the more beneficial development – new blood or the expulsion of those whose number had grown to create a bloated and largely unresponsive squad under Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Frank Lampard last season.

Of course, with the visit today of Nottingham Forest, Poch will only have four competitive games behind him – three in the league and a narrow, blush-sparing win over Wimbledon in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night – which means judgement must be reserved in the short-term. But if the club line that this is a long-term project is to be believed, questions will be asked on what measure of success will be an acceptable return for the eye-watering outlay. 

Is, even, a cup this season ambitious for a club that has this year spent £222 million on two midfielders alone? Is a European finish to be expected and if so, are we talking about a Top Four place next May, or a Europa League or even a Europa Conference League place? Note, no one is talking about Chelsea challenging for the Premier League title itself this season, but surely the target must be to match or get close to Manchester City amid renewed challenges from Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle and Tottenham.

Nothing is guaranteed, and as Pochettino’s injury woes have piled up, the rug has, if not been pulled from beneath him, certainly shown signs of slipping. On paper he has a wealth of talent at his disposal, but on paper is never a guarantee, as Mykhailo Mudryk has demonstrated following his £88.5 million transfer from Shakhtar Donetsk and a decidedly unimpressive opening spell in the Premier League, which is now curtailed by injury. As we’ve seen so often in football, the heavier the price tag the heavier the weight of expectation, and that may well have been the cause of the young Ukrainian’s decidedly underwhelming displays so far. He, perhaps more than any other squad player, will be Pochettino’s primary target for improvement.

While the astronomical amount of money Chelsea has spent over the last three windows will always be a lighting rod for critics and rival fans alike, the harsh reality is that if it doesn’t result in sustained success, it will only be seen as one of the most profligate billionaire’s folly in football’s most recent history of inflationary excess.

“We need to be careful with the young guys because they need time to settle,” Pochettino said during his press conference yesterday ahead of today’s home fixture against Forest. “We need to settle all the players who have arrived late, create spaces and build a solid structure to perform after.” 

Cole Palmer
Picture: Chelsea FC

He was addressing questions about the £42.5 million arrival of Palmer, the final purchase of this extraordinary window. “He is from Manchester and is going to move to London. London is different, the club is different, the culture is different. He needs to - first of all, before he starts to perform - settle and feel his space. We are not going to put pressure on him to perform. He needs to be happy and calm and find space in this team.”

“He fits the project and he is a young and talented player. Of course, he also decided to come because he expected to play more and be important here. That’s not the most important thing, the most important thing is that he wanted to come because he sees Chelsea as a project for him to improve his game and to maybe be more involved in every single game. But, yes, I think the quality is there. He has great potential.”

Pochettino appeared to suggest that with Palmer his 13th new player this summer the spree will slow down. “We need to explain the reality in the same way - we sign players, we sell players. It is more about net spending than really the money you spend because that’s the balance the club is now trying to get.” Crucially he addded: “This is a very special situation for the club from the beginning but, for sure, the club won’t keep doing for years what they have done in the past.”

For me, the summer transfer window is usually a time of excitement. At Chelsea in the modern era, it’s been one long Christmas Day, lasting from June to September each year. This time around, following the randomness of the Boehly-Clearlake spree last summer and again this January, it’s easy to feel brittle if, for nothing else, the risk to pride if the influx of new players goes tits up. 

Just once it would be nice for Chelsea to be the club people don’t talk about until they’ve achieved something. Tribality normally prevents that, as the barely-acknowledged successes in the Abramovich era serve testament to (amid the near universal deification of the two Manchesters). But the club doesn’t help itself. I’ve always bridled at the suggestion that Chelsea has, for the last 20 years, bought success, as almost every club at the top of the pyramid is guilty of the very same. I just hope that the price tags we’ve seen this summer can be justified on the pitch, and the new intake give us up in the stands something to be genuinely excited about.

New year, new problems, old story

Picture; Facebook/Chelsea FC

The moment when, four minutes before the end of the first half of Chelsea’s encounter with Liverpool yesterday at Stamford Bridge, the two young lads sat immediately in front of us had had enough and slouched off to the East Stand bar to watch the remainder of the period, said it all about the home side’s performance at that point in proceedings. 

Chelsea had been as insipid as I’d seen them in recent weeks, despite this being Liverpool. I utter the Merseysiders’ name with a degree of vituperative disdain. Because we have form. History. Go back to the 1970s, when Liverpool had a regal air about them, such was their domination of English and European football. Chelsea were in the doldrums, especially as the 1980s came close, partly the result of dire finances and partly the result of just not being very good. 

To the pre-teen me, fixtures between Chelsea and Liverpool was Subbutteo made real: Blues and Reds. Liverpool were, as Manchester United were to become in the ’90s, lauded without question. To this end, the residual rivalry between Chelsea and Liverpool - or, at least, their fans - should have fizzled out years ago. But it keeps appearing, like niggling bouts of gout. I’ll spare the lengthy list of flashpoints, but it would include Chelsea beating Liverpool in May 2003 and pipping them to a Champions League (which also swung Roman Abramovich’s towards the West London club), and then the pyschodrama between José Mourinho and Rafa Benitez when in the blue and red corners respectively (skirmishing that took a perverse turn when Benitez became Chelsea’s interim manager and then went and won them the Europa League). If you dig back into my blog post archive you’ll find a longer essay about the Chelsea-Liverpool back-and-forth. 

Brought back up to date, Liverpool arrived in SW6 yesterday with its manager buried away, self-isolating with Covid, and Chelsea dealing with Romelu Lukaku giving an unauthorised interview to Sky Sports Italia, in which he appeared to question manager Thomas Tuchel as well as his own future to the club that paid Inter Milan £97.5 million in the summer to take him off their financially-troubled hands. And so, there was an air of unsettledness about Tuchel’s team as the game kicked off, Lukaku not even on the bench, and they found themselves 2-0 down by the 26th minute. There were plenty around Stamford Bridge carrying an ominous sense of foreboding as Liverpool threatened to run riot. 

It wasn’t just a case of it looking unlikely that Chelsea would get back into the game - a two-goal deficit at this level, and Chelsea’s form going into the game not inspiring much confidence - but the mood around the club had been progressively souring in recent weeks. A familiar story, too: I’ve lost count of how many times Chelsea have gone into the Christmas period looking suddenly shaky, followed by the arrival of a new manager by March. In fact the pattern this season has been almost identical to that 12 months ago when the wheels came off (or were forced off) Frank Lampard’s tenure, prompting Tuchel’s appointment and a near-miraculous revival that saw the Blues win the Champions League by May.

In the first third of this season Chelsea were being mentioned - or at least muttered - as being genuine title contenders, with an imperious defence anchored by the age-defying Thiago Silva, a goalkeeper in Edouard Mendy who seemed to stop everything, and a dynamic attack that saw wingbacks Reece James and Ben Chilwell vie with the recognised forwards for goal-scoring. Tuchel had steadied the ship at the back in his first few months, but the Chelsea backline had become increasingly vulnerable in recent weeks. Throw in a giant hole in midfield left by the mercurial N’Golo Kate, out with injury, and Mateo Kovacic, out with Covid, the spotlight soon shone on both a leaky defence and an ineffective attack, itself bereft of Lukaku due to injury and then a bout of Covid himself.

So, when squad numbers in the 60s and 70s start appearing on the bench, drawn from the Under-23s, things started to look worrying around one of the most lavishly-equipped teams in European football. You had to, though, afford Tuchel some sympathy, as you do any Chelsea head coach. A Chelsea manager is expected to deliver a trophy a season, but it’s hard to see where one will come from this term, given that Manchester City are running away with the Premier League, retaining the European Cup looks even more unlikely than it did a year ago, and the Carabao and FA cups, which continue this week, progress at a time with Chelsea both depleted and seemingly demoralised.

But hold on. While the lads from seats 109-111 in Row 19 of the East Stand Upper were supping their half-time beers a few minutes early yesterday, Chelsea defied the odds and clawed back two goals. Two good goals, too, especially Christian Pulisic’s 46th-minute equaliser. Come the second half and we were treated to one of the most entertaining 49 minutes of football I’ve seen this season. No more goals, sadly, but that didn’t matter. And it wasn’t just Chelsea, either - we had a proper ding-dong. A brilliant end to ridiculous Christmas football scheduling, which has seen clubs play every two or three days just to satisfy home TV audiences gorging themselves on Quality Street and turkey sandwiches.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

The question is, what happens next? Wednesday’s Carabao Cup tie with Tottenham will prove another test for Tuchel’s team, though it’s more than likely that next Saturday’s FA Cup Third Round tie at Stamford Bridge against Chesterfield will provide a runout for the fringe players and Under-23s rather than any of the first team regulars. Because with them, Tuchel has other challenges to address, and they’re the kind of challenges Lampard encountered at this same point a year ago - players that should be delivering that weren’t. Admittedly this time the German has more injuries to contend with, but this is where he will have to dig deep, as he did when he first came on board at Chelsea. He will not just draw on available resources but have to organise and inspire. Where they deliver is another matter entirely, given where Chelsea sit in the grand scheme of things. But like it or not, the job falls to Tuchel, who has demonstrated more than adequately that he is someone Chelsea would be mad to jettison at the first sight of trouble, as they do so often when it seems that the silverware cabinet is looking unlikely to welcome any additions this season.

Football is fickle. Go back just six weeks and Chelsea were six points clear at the top of the Premier League. They’d also just put Juventus to the sword in ruthless fashion, and in a spell of games when, at various times, they’d been without the likes of Kante, Havertz, Werner, Mount, Kovacic and Lukaku - players any side would kill to have on their books. But it was during that Juventus game that Ben Chilwell ruptured his ACL. The left-sided wingback had been key to Chelsea’s progress from simply being a good defensive side to one that could prise open opposition defences. 

Now, only an act of God or a spectacular collapse will give any of the chasing pack hope of catching up with City. But that shouldn’t mean Chelsea can’t finish the season with something to show for their quality in the run-up to the December collapse. Their Carabao Cup tie with Spurs is a semi-final, putting them only 360 minutes away from a trophy, even if it’s not the one they’d most like. They’re still in the Champions League, and without gilding the lilly, they’ve defied the odds - even against the Bayerns of this world - before. They probably shouldn’t even be defending champions based on last season’s form if we were to be honest. And if we’re counting competitive opportunities, next month Chelsea take part in the Club World Cup. 

Mindset will be the fuel that drives them. Tuchel doesn’t just have to organise Chelsea and select the right combinations and formations of available players but also instil in them the verve that sometimes makes all the difference. It’s a confidence that, yesterday, was lacking in Christian Pulisic’s atrocious miss early in the game while odds-on to score, but was there in spades when he volleyed the ball up into the top right corner of the Liverpool goal. Tuchel was handed something of a poisoned chalice when he took over at Chelsea on 26 January last year. He wasn’t just replacing another doomed head coach, but the club’s record goal scorer, Lampard. To some fans Tuchel had risen without trace; Google filled in the blanks but his recent history at Paris St. Germain suggested another European technocrat and a troublemaker too. A year on there is a strengthening relationship with the fanbase which also reflects what he is contending with. 

Twitter and radio phone-ins, the great modern sounding boards of public opinion, have appeared to back his decision yesterday to drop Lukaku from the matchday squad, not just drop him from the starting line-up, and you could conclude from the way the team responded to going two down to Liverpool that the punishment of a recalcitrant teammate didn’t have any detrimental effect on team spirit. 

Picture: Chelsea FC

The Lukaku saga isn’t over, however. ‘Clear the air talks’ might straighten things out, but the last thing Tuchel needs right now is an agitating player. Most fans, though, appeared to support Lukaku’s exclusion from the Liverpool game, concluding that maintaining leadership and discipline trumped appeasing a star ego. Amongst pundits there was a mixed view. Darren Bent tweeted: “I understand Lukaku has done wrong and should be punished appropriately but leaving him out of the squad today for one of the biggest games of the season, when your [sic] still trying to stay in the title race and his form in the last 2 games seems extreme. What's people's thoughts?”. Michael Owen coyly wrote: “If reports are accurate, it’s a huge decision from Tuchel to leave Lukaku out of today’s squad. But in the long term interests of the club, it’s a good one. No player is more important than the club and while being employed by someone, you can’t speak out like he has.” 

Graeme Souness was characteristically uncompromising, branding Lukaku’s comments in the Sky interview as “ridiculous”, “disrespectful” and “enormously“ damaging to Chelsea, adding that it was the behaviour of an impetuous 19-year-old rather than a senior player at 29. “I can't tell you a worse thing that a player can do at this moment in the season,” Souness added. “To come out and say basically, ‘I don't want to be here, I don't want to play with [these] players’ and how that damages Chelsea going forward, it has to.”

So, what happens next? Today, Tuchel and Lukaku were meant to have “talks”. In his post-match comments yesterday Tuchel attempted to play down the issue. “It’s not Chelsea-like [for Lukaku to say what he said in the interview] but it’s also not the worst thing in the world.” “[It is] not the first time an interview out there causes some noise nobody needs. But we can handle it. I don’t feel [it was a] personal attack. On Saturday, new statements [came out] and it got too big, too much noise, and we lost totally the focus of the match.” 

That last statement is the salient point. Lukaku has provided an unwelcome distraction just as his team was having to deal with injuries and Covid absences. Given the way their energy and concentration was noticeably exploited by Liverpool’s first two goals, you could easily say that the Lukaku distraction had an immediate effect. But, then, the way in which Chelsea fought their way back into the game, equalised and then went on to match Liverpool in what would end up being a satisfyingly enjoyable draw (even if it did allow Manchester City to open up an even bigger lead), suggests that no player is greater than the club he plays for.

Picture: Chelsea FC

We’re not yet at the stage of Lukaku leaving Chelsea. He’s ceainly not going to leave in the January window. There’s no guarantee, either, that he will move on in the summer. Inter can’t afford to buy him back, anyway, which is why they sold him in the first place. But the player must also remember that Chelsea managed to win the Champions League without him, on the back of a nervous few months that had seen another manager ejected. But we shouldn’t be naive. Player power (yes, you, Marcos Alonso and Antonio Rüdiger...) played its ugly part, as it had with José Mourinho, André Villas Boas and even Antonio Conte, all victims of uppity strikers. One hopes that cool heads prevail within the Chelsea hierarchy now. There’s no denying that a slump has occurred over the last six weeks, and while injury and Covid have played their part, the squad hasn’t been decimated so wholesale. Each week Tuchel has managed to send out players with first team credentials, albeit augmented by untried youngsters on the bench, just in case. Pundits might be tempted to revive talk of Tuchel’s tempestuous demise at Paris, and who knows if he is a changed manager now. But after some misgivings at first, largely the result of the how Lampard was displaced rather than anything about the incoming head coach, Tuchel has mostly proven to be an inspiring manager. Easily one of the best in the world. Chelsea would be mad to dispense with his services now, but you wouldn’t put it past Roman Abramovich and his capricious management philosophy. To boot, we’ve long grown used to Chelsea’s fire-and-hire cycle, largely because it seems to have worked. 

Judging by the way Stamford Bridge sang Tuchel’s name in the opening and closing minutes of yesterday’s encounter with Liverpool, the first time I can recall this season at home, he has certainly won over the faithful. We have, though, been here before…

You snooze, you lose?

I know I'm tempting fate posting on the Romelu Lukaku situation this Saturday morning, given that by the end of the weekend the striker could be a signed, sealed and delivered Manchester United player. That's as opposed to the Chelsea player everyone - including Antonio Conte - has spent the better part of the last 12 months assuming he would eventually become again.

The 24-year-old's protracted desire to escape Everton, to whom Chelsea sold him in 2014, has been as tiresome as it has generated eye-watering headlines of his valuation. That Everton allegedly slapped a presumably prohibitive £100 million price on him is as damning a statement of the inflationary state of football as anything else. I suppose you can't really blame Everton, even if he's really worth only a fraction of that amount.

Both United and Chelsea have apparently offered £75 million. This is still an insane amount, but Conte is reported to have instructed his club's dealmakers (principally Marina Granovskaia) to get Lukaku at any cost. However, that doesn't appear to extend to the fee that Lukaku's agent, Mino Raola, would want from any sale (Raola notoriously pocketed a tidy sum for bringing Paul Pogba to Old Trafford, and also represents another United player, Henrikh Mkhitaryan). Advantage United.

Antonio Conte has now, according to The Times, made his peace over Lukaku signing for United, although he's understandably seething that a player he's been openly courting for the better part of a year is being drawn towards José Mourinho's United at the last minute. And it will raise questions about Chelsea's transfer nous. There's no doubt that the club has demonstrated sound acumen when husbanding its resources: the sales of Juan Cuadrado, Asmir Begovic, Christian Atsu, Bertrand Traore and Nathan Ake have brought in £62 million, money which will go towards the impending acquisitions of Tiemoue Bakayoko and Antonio Rudiger, and possibly Alex Sandro. But still.

Long before those three names were on anyone's lips, Lukaku had been a case of 'when' rather than 'if'. At root has been his desire to play in the Champions League and even to prove to Chelsea that José Mourinho was wrong for selling him to begin with. Everton initially didn't want to let him go, and slapped a nonsensical price tag on him as the proverbial sprig of garlic to ward of predatory interest. On top of that, it has been suggested that Chelsea's relationship with Everton has not been great since it spent much of 2015 trying to buy John Stones. Increasing bids from Chelsea were rejected on the basis that Stones was not for sale. Until Manchester City came along with £47 million, of course. Funny that.

Clubs now appear giddy with an inflated pot of television money, and are apparently happy with increasing their spending on individual players by magnitudes of leaps and bounds. There is a precedent for this: when BSkyB bought the first package of Premier League broadcasting rights in 1992, ahead of the league's debut season, it paid £304 million, establishing the model for paying way over the odds to keep all competitors at bay. 26 years on, the last three-year Premier League TV deal checked in at £8.3 billion. Even with Financial Fair Play ensuring that clubs balance the books, things have gone nuts. If Chelsea do, against the odds, manage to bag Lukaku, it should be remembered that the last two strikers they bought - Diego Costa in 2015 and Michy Batshuayi last summer - cost £32 million and £33 million respectively. And in the case of Costa, you could say they've got their money's worth. Would the same be said of Lukaku? I'm not so sure...

So we sold De Bruyne and Lukaku. Get over it.

Reuters

At the end of last night's Champions League quarter-final tie between Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain there were two sets of opposing schools of opinion at work on Twitter. And both involved, exclusively, Chelsea supporters.

The first concerned praise for City beating PSG and progressing to a semi-final, the only English club that will do so this season. For every Chelsea fan sportingly slapping City on the back, there was another, soaked in bile, branding any such individual as a traitor to the cause. This branch of football's tribalism has also manifested itself in the conflict of conscience Chelsea followers have at seeing Tottenham doing so well this season. Chelsea's dismal, trophyless term has rendered many in a state of catatonia, numbed by the failure to achieve any of the club's objectives, including retaining the Premier League title, but also accepting the mediocrity that will leave the club in or around mid-table on May 15.

The second movement concerned Kevin De Bruyne, Belgium's best known Prince Harry tribute act, who scored the scorching goal last night that made the ultimate difference between City and PSG. Chelsea, as you might recall, bought the-then 20-year-old from Genk for £7 million on the final day of the 2011-12 winter transfer window. But, being Chelsea, he remained at Genk for the rest of that season, before being loaned out to Werder Bremen the following August. A successful, goals-a-plenty season later, he returned to Chelsea, by then under the management of José Mourinho. Mourinho gave assurances that De Bruyne would play for him and, being a capable attacking midfielder, especially down the flanks, he certainly seemed to fit the Mourinho preference, previously seen with Arjen Robben, Damien Duff and Joe Cole during his first spell in charge, to title-winning effect.

However, the ginger winger somehow failed to convince the club that he was worth keeping. Mourinho himself explained that De Bruyne had "failed to compete" for a place, suggesting either an attitude issue or a reaction to Mourinho's training approach. And so, De Bruyne was offloaded in the January to Wolfsburg, where he spent the rest of the 2013-14 season, and the 2014-15 season, building up the solid reputation (including being voted by journalists the German league player of the season) that made City fork out a club record £55 million.

Which brings us to last night. Frankly, what little we saw of De Bruyne from the stand at Stamford Bridge didn't exactly convince us that he was the Chosen One. Like all the other attacking midfielders Chelsea have bought and sold - and that list runs the length of the Bayeux Tapestry - he showed plenty of running and endeavour, but certainly didn't display the sort of talent that justified City spending so heavily to acquire. So maybe Mourinho was right.

Former Chelsea striker Tony Cascarino doesn't think so. In his column in The Times today, he wrote: "I can't understand how [Chelsea] and José Mourinho decided to let him go. He may not have played that many games for them but surely he showed his potential in training every day?" adding "I don't know how Chelsea couldn't see his potential." Mourinho, like his mentor Sir Alex Ferguson, has never held back in showing short shrift to players that don't meet his requirements. Just look at Juan Mata, who went from Chelsea's player of the season to lucrative sale to Manchester United. Clearly, though, De Bruyne's results in Germany spoke for themselves, and even with their reputation for unwarranted largesse (a trait obviously shared with Chelsea), City saw in the Belgian something they needed. Last night, that investment may have singularly paid off.

But for Chelsea fans, however, to bemoan offloading De Bruyne to begin with is wasted energy. Likewise, Romelu Lukaku, whose own brief appearances for Chelsea were not particularly convincing, even if he disappeared on loan to West Brom and Everton for three seasons, where he scored like a demon.

It is galling to see, and can be likened to owning the winning lottery ticket that slips through your fingers on a windy day (or, as Danny Baker put it on Twitter, "Like seeing the girl you dumped at 17 go on to be Jennifer Aniston."). But what can you about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Chelsea's transfer policy leaves an enormous amount to be desired. As this blog has frequently commented on (actually, make that 'constantly'...), the club's husbandry of young talent, loaning them out, having them win tropies in the youth squads, but never letting them see the light of day in the first team, is an absolute disgrace, no matter what the footballing or even business rationale the club may put behind it. And, if Chelsea let De Bruyne and Lukaku go because their player development processes aren't sharp enough to recognise talent, or because they didn't fit the ethic of the manager, then the blame for that needs to fall squarely on the shoulders of Michael Emenalo, the club's technical director, or on Mourinho.

But then it is also possible that, like us in the stands, Mourinho just didn't see anything in either player to convince him. It was perplexing that Lukaku would go off on loan, score a decent number of goals, and then return to the Bridge to bumble about unconvincingly. The question is, was he a diamond in need of polishing? Was Mourinho the right manager to apply the polish? Or did the player simply not fit the manager?

The point of all this is that, there's not a lot of point in moaning about it. Chelsea moved on. They sold David Luiz and bought Diego Costa and Cesc Fàbregas with the proceeds, winning the Premier League on the back of their endeavour. Lukaku might, we read, still come back to Chelsea, as if to prove a point (and in the process, earn Everton a princely sum). De Bruyne may well turn out to be an expensive impulse buy for Manchester City. Chelsea may need to do something about improving their player development processes. Either that, or buy a better crystal ball. But to moan about decisions to sell average-looking players who go on to be above average, well that's just tough. Time to move on. As they did. Or at least as far as this coming Saturday, when City - including De Bruyne - come to Stamford Bridge.

Reality bites for Chelsea - so now its time to fix the problem for good

© Simon Poulter 2016

At some point today, Barry Bright, an ex-estate agent and the former chief executive of both Sittingbourne FC and Gillingham FC, as well as a sitting member of the Kent Police Authority, sat down at his desk at the Football Association and, like Elliott Ness trying bring down Al Capone, looked at every angle that could have Diego Costa's automatic red card ban extended for his generally industrial behaviour against Everton in Saturday's FA Cup quarter-final. 

Because, with the FA concluding that Costa didn't bite Gareth Barry - duh! - there was still a rabid desire by the body's Independent Regulatory Commission to make an example of the Brazilian-born Spaniard. Predictably, the media has already started their braying: "He had intent," they suggest. By that token, looking at the usual expression on the face of an enraged Diego Costa, the span of intent could range from a ritual disemboweling to a nuclear attack. 

So what about: "He made a rude gesture to Everton fans"? Well, he was photographed making a horizontal V-sign, much as most rap stars and, now, all football players do when someone sticks a camera in front of them. It was hardly Harvey Smith.

And then: "He was about to bite Barry, but then decided not to" -- since disproven by Barry himself; Or: "He looked at the referee a bit funny": well who could blame the combustible Costa from not getting a tiny bit peeved with the out-of-his-depth Michael Oliver for the bruising attention his shins had been getting all afternoon from Everton's defenders.

In the end, the inevitable: a charge of improper conduct, for his alleged behaviour "after being shown a second yellow card in the game," according to the FA's official statement. In addition, Costa has been given until Wednesday "to provide his observations" over that "alleged gesture".

So, while Mr Bright and his chums do their best to keep Costa out of sight for what remains of this dismal season for Chelsea, there needs to be a similarly forensic and zealous investigation carried out by the club itself themselves as to why they will end 2015-2016 with nothing to show for it. That's unless, pathetically, they really, truly regard avoiding relegation as a trophy to be proud of.

Because with no more Champions League (perhaps for a long while) and no hope of a Wembley visit this year, Chelsea's season has run totally barren. True, Guus Hiddink has restored confidence and their league form since his arrival has been impressive, but this is still only by comparison to the abject moribundity that they'd allowed themselves to fall into under José Mourinho. Hiddink's salvaging of their league status is big, but put into the wider perspective, it's been one of survival.

And, so, Chelsea can now coast to May 15 when they play Leicester City - perhaps by then Chelsea's successors to the Premier League title - on the final day of the season. What circularity: a season that began on August 8 last year at Stamford Bridge with Mourinho losing the plot over the doctor, ending with Roman Abramovich having to watch Claudio Ranieri - the "dead man walking" he sacked in 2004 - walk through a guard of honour made up of Chelsea's players.

Perhaps it might wake the Russian into accepting how out of shape his club really is. How this club may have acquired an incredible haul of trophies since he took over, but for each of those trophies there is a discarded manager and the perception amongst the rest of the footballing world that Chelsea is a club lacking soul, humanity, class, respect and heritage. Those are all accusations you will hear a hundred times a day on Twitter from the trolls, but even I have to admit they're a tiny bit right.

When I was a child I had no real understanding of why I supported Chelsea. I just did. Liverpool and even Ipswich Town were in the ascendency of the old First Division. Chelsea had a perceived glamour, because they'd been moderately successful in the 60s and early 70s, and bizarrely had picked up a celebrity following that included, yes, Raquel Welch. But after winning the European Cup Winner's Cup in 1971, the next time their trophy cabinet would be opened was to receive the Full Members Cup in 1986, which is about as prestigious as listing a swimming certificate next to your degree.

So, when the away fans taunt us with their "shit club, no history" and "where were you when you were crap" jibes, I pretty much know exactly where I was. Which is why the arrival of Abramovich has been something we've all embraced. Because we have had success. Oodles of it. We've even played some exhilarating football, not just under Mourinho, but also under Ancelotti, Di Matteo, and - dare I say it - Benitez. Avram Grant even took us to a Champions League final. Yes, him.

This season, however, has proven just how tenuous success can be. Champions one minute, relegation candidates the next, while relegation candidates one December become champions-elect the next. Chelsea, have reminded us how, in general,  English teams are mediocre in Europe. Arsenal will soon follow once Barcelona have done the inevitable in their Champions League second leg (and there's a club with a moribundity about it that makes the vibe at Chelsea look quite peppy).

Chelsea will always be my club, just as they always have been. My first visit to Stamford Bridge at the age of 10. There in 1983 when they almost were relegated to the Third Division. There in November 1991 when they were beaten 3-0 at home by Norwich in front of just 15,000, with Dave Beasant culpable for two of those goals. We ended that season, the last before the Premier League began, in 14th place.

Abramovich was supposed to have saved Chelsea from the turmoil of financial collapse, legal disputes and Ken Bates. His spectacular injection of funds was supposed to have bought us the best players and Europe's finest training facilities. Our academy system was supposed to have generated next generations of homegrown. Abramovich's own vision was for Chelsea to become the new Milan, challenging the likes of Bayern and Barcelona for the European cup each season. In fact, he wanted Chelsea to be the new Milan so much that he bought Andrei Schevchenko and eventually persuaded Carlo Ancelotti to become the manager. Although he sacked him the season after the Italian had delivered a league and cup double.

It's when you examine this relentlessly unending dysfunction that you have to admit, reluctantly as a Chelsea fan, that the success and the silverware - while nice to celebrate with open-top bus parades - have been achieved without any long-lasting foundation. 12 managers in 13 years is the sort of track record that we scoff at Newcastle for. We rightly pillory Mike Ashley for the poisonous atmosphere he has instilled on Tyneside, but we ignore the continuing ineptitude behind the scenes at our own club, one in which our Under-18 and Under-21 sides continue to win trophies, but see no progression to the first team. One in which 36 players end up on loan throughout Europe, with only very few of them showing any chances of getting a game for the club they signed for. One in which the answer to one crocked striker is to bring in an even more crocked striker, not play him, and then bring in a more crocked striker and not play him either. And just where are Papy Djilobodji, Marco Amelia, Matt Miazga and Danilo Pantic, transfer deadline signings? Nope, me neither.

Tony McArdle/Everton FC

In today's Daily Mail the excellent Martin Samuel accuses Chelsea of lacking a philosophy. He is totally right. What is the club philosophy? More importantly, what is the club's strategy? And did the two brilliantly executed goals by Romelu Lukaku on Saturday do anything to remind those who make decisions at the club that their player buying and selling strategy is a mess? As Danny Baker so eruditely tweeted: "Chelsea fans watching Lukaku. Like seeing the girl you dumped at 17 go on to be Jennifer Aniston." Ditto Kevin de Bruyne.

What was the long-term purpose of Abramovich turning a semi-fashionable but constantly under-achieving London club into one that came to regard itself as having a birthright to be in the European elite if that status eventually fizzled out through the club's own doing? Mourinho can't be blamed for the whole of Chelsea's malaise this season (though clearly a lot of it). And it would be wrong to go after scapegoats when it is obvious that the club's inconsistency and lack of stability is clubwide.

That said, much frustration or even anger should be generated by Michael Emenalo, the technical director. Not much is really known about Emenalo, or why he was appointed to such a pivotal position within the club - responsible for player development as well as talent acquisition, along with Abramovich acolyte Marina Granovskaia who handles transfer negotiations. I'm sure the latter has done a pretty good job in getting good deals from a financial point of view, but has this duo delivered anything much when it comes to players?

Antonio Conte (assuming it is he that becomes the 13th manager of Abramovich's reign) will no doubt demand new players. Indeed he's probably already handed in his shopping list. Fine. A new coach brings in fresh blood. But what about all the dead wood? Will he be able to reduce the ridiculously wasteful player loans? Will he make more of an effort to see youth promoted from the cup-winning 'development' sides?

Cynics might scoff at terms like "rebuilding" and "transition" - and with some merit, too - but these are what Chelsea now needs. Accept that John Terry is no longer viable. Accept that Eden Hazard is no longer willing. Accept that Costa would rather be anywhere else. Accept that if you're going to buy players, you'd better have a vision for them, and play them. Unearth the talented 18, 19, 20 and 21-year-olds the club has about the place and discard the panic buys and acquisitions that were doing anyone else a favour but the club. Build up a new core, one that in principle can emulate the spine that Čech, Terry, Lampard and Drogba provided for so many of those successful Abramovich years.

If that responsibility does fall to Conte, it will be interesting to see just how far the 46-year-old gets. Though we never know anything of Abramovich's true ambitions, he had recognised in re-hiring Mourinho (mainly because he couldn't get Pep Guardiola and Mourinho couldn't get Old Trafford) that they would aim to establish a "dynasty" at Chelsea. This, despite the knowledge that 'long-term' for Mourinho never means more than three years. Within 24 hours of signing a lucrative contract extension last August, the Portuguese was jumping up and down at his club doctor. And the rest of the season, and indeed the dynasty building, would simply have to be put down to experience.

To look at this mess positively then, we must adopt the phrase "today is the first day of the rest of your life", an expression that is both simplistic and, yet, alive with positivity. Chelsea will stoicly chalk up the last seven or eight months as character building. But they will have to do more.

Bringing in a manager like Conte is not, in reality, any different than any of the 12 "permanent" managers they've brought in before. He'll be no more of a miracle worker than even The Special One. His reputation is good, but not especially impressive by comparison to any other elite manager.

The question is whether he'll be able to buck the trends that have thwarted others. He will need assurances that Chelsea is his to rebuild. Experience has taught us that is unlikely. For until Abramovich shakes himself free from the hangers-on who "advise" him, who convince him that the likes of Emenalo are qualified to make big strategic decisions, Chelsea could hire me for all the good that it will do.