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Liam Rosenior is not the only problem at Chelsea; he is not even the biggest problem. The BlueCo model is broken. Some non-football private equity folk stormed in and believed that they could rewrite the rulebook on how an elite football club can maintain success. What happened next will shock you: they were wrong.

It’s all about player trading, you see. You buy very young (and very expensively), develop, win trophies, sell for profit and have more money than when you started to reinvest (or take out those profits yourself). You try to take a structure from another club, even though that rarely works. You double down on things that aren’t working for some reason. Maybe it’s because you aren’t spending enough and the contracts aren’t long enough?

Still, Rosenior is a problem because he epitomises the misguided fallacy of the model. Chelsea hand out long-term contracts to spread out their cost through amortisation; it allows them to buy more. That is one of the tenets of the project.

Long-term contracts for employees inevitably reduce accountability, even subconsciously. Why does it matter how you play now if your wage is guaranteed for the next six years? That’s the complication of long-term projects at elite clubs: they require shorter-term results otherwise everyone drifts.

In those circumstances, you need a manager who generates accountability on their own. They do so through instilling discipline. Or through their past record at similarly-sized clubs. Or through their tactics. Or through inspirational man management.

And, sorry, but Rosenior had none of the four that made him a fit for this position, with these players, in these circumstances. If that weren’t enough, he also played into the fears of Chelsea supporters about the direction of travel under BlueCo because he was a nepo-baby hire from within their multi-club system. Rosenior became the personification of BlueCo. The hard job got harder.

All the while, Rosenior’s media persona has generated deeply unhelpful scrutiny because it has become its own self-fulfilling prophecy: the sillier the soundbites, the worse the performance.

Former Rosenior's teammate at Hull City, Kevin Kilbane:

"I played with Liam at Hull, and I got on well with Liam; he used to tell some great stories of Roy Keane when he was his manager at Ipswich.

And you see the way he is now, to me, he’s unrecognisable to the player and… pic.twitter.com/Ogt4nX5SHQ

— Vince (@Blue_Footy) March 24, 2026

Kevin Kilbane, Rosenior’s former teammate, may have sounded a little mean when he said Rosenior sounds “like he’s swallowed a psychologist’s manual”, but this stuff matters. Players see it; supporters see it too. Rosenior sounds like he learnt motivational management at evening classes and that doesn’t help. He needed to prove that he was big enough for this challenge and his own words made that work more difficult.

It’s hard to fathom just how quickly this has got toxic. Chelsea have now lost five matches in a row without scoring for the first time since the Titanic sank; just the metaphor they need. There was a desperate switch of formation against Brighton that made no sense and didn’t work. Senior players have talked up their chances of leaving the club. One of them, Enzo Fernandez, was suspended for two games and yet was made captain on Tuesday evening. The club that outclassed them was the same one they took the structure wholesale from.

The biggest problem of all: Chelsea couldn’t afford to get this one wrong. Last month they announced the largest annual losses in English football history. The women’s team and the buildings have been sold. They need Champions League revenue next season and even finishing in the top half seems doubtful now. In those circumstances, appointing Rosenior might just have been the worst mid-season appointment at an elite club in decades.

“Liam has the ability to get the best out of this squad quickly and joins us with the responsibility and the backing to ensure Chelsea continues to compete at the top level in all competitions this season and in seasons to come,” read Chelsea’s welcome statement 107 days ago. It sounds like a bad joke now, or some inadvertent harbinger of doom.

But the real punchline? Chelsea followed the pattern of their own model by giving Rosenior a contract until 2032. There is a real chance that he fails to reach six months in charge of a club that agreed to pay him for six years. Ain’t that just the BlueCo way.

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Fulham are a club approaching a crossroads.

Amid uncertainty over the future of head coach Marco Silva, whose contract expires at the end of June, the Cottagers are now obliged to weigh up options ahead of next season.

Those include the possibility of sourcing a replacement for the Portuguese, who has been at Fulham for five years, or enticing Silva with a new deal and strengthening the squad.

The west London outfit are currently 12th in the Premier League and still have an outside chance of European football in 2026-27.

However, with a squad perceived to be lacking in sufficient depth and a surprising FA Cup exit to Southampton last month, Silva has faced some supporter criticism.

As such, talks between the club hierarchy and the manager need to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Fulham are also looking at contingency plans, should Silva – previously linked with Tottenham Hotspur – choose to depart.

“If Fulham finish strongly between now and the end of the season, he may stay but the club is at a crossroads,” a club insider told The i Paper.

“The club has ensured investment is there and Marco Silva is good at blending in players to the squad, but some fans suggest he is not looking enough at academy prospects.

“Silva is very guarded at the moment. He thought he might be in for the Tottenham job earlier in the season and there was interest from Brighton, too. In terms of his ambition, he wants to manage in Europe and that’s what makes the last part of the season so important for Fulham as they try and reach a qualification stage.

“If Marco stays then expect the backroom team to be bolstered. I think he feels it is a bit thin at the moment, compared to other clubs, but things like that are getting closer in discussions around his future.

“However, if Marco does go, Tony Khan [Fulham sporting director] has a contingency plan. Any replacement manager would have to be Premier League ready, with a similar profile to Silva. Someone who also knows European leagues and is a tracksuit manager.”

Intriguingly, someone who is available and broadly fits the bill in the event of Silva leaving Fulham is Thomas Frank.

The Dane left Brentford for Tottenham last June, only to become a managerial casualty of a fraught season after just eight months in north London.

Frank attended the scoreless derby between Brentford and Fulham on Saturday, fuelling speculation that he could be a potential new boss at Craven Cottage.

“He [Frank] lives in Sheen, south west London and would be a good fit for Fulham, but Crystal Palace are also interested,” the source explained.

“The Khan family are big on someone nice to deal with in and around the club, and Thomas Frank is a really decent guy.

“Older and younger Fulham fans may have different views on the idea of him, but he is a good fit for younger player development which worked well at Brentford.

“This has obvious appeal for the Khans. I’m not sure he would be the top choice if Marco left, but he is a choice. He was at the Brentford-Fulham game for something, maybe he was looking at Fulham?

“He knows the Premier League very well so would certainly be a consideration if things were to change.”

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With conversations ongoing over Silva, it should be noted that the majority of Fulham fans would prefer the former Everton and Sporting Lisbon coach to remain. 

Harry Wilson may leave the club shortly too, which is another concern in relation to summer rebuilding and reinvestment.

The i Paper understands Silva has significant concerns over the right-back and forward positions.

“I think a lot of fans are still in the camp of wanting Marco Silva to stay,” the source noted.

“The Premier League has been a bit stale this season. Look at Chelsea in sixth down to Crystal Palace in 13th place. They are all much of a muchness. Fulham’s inconsistency is a concern as is the squad depth.

“While it pays for Silva to assess options, would he be seen as a strong option for Newcastle United if Eddie Howe leaves? I’m not so sure. The club have been good to him.

“Ideally he would like to stay – he knows from previous jobs that the grass isn’t always greener.

“From the club’s perspective they want him to stay, but they also want the team to finish the season in style. So these weeks are very important in terms of Silva staying or going. I do feel he owes some loyalty to Fulham. The players love him. It’s ‘do or die’ time for Fulham, really.”

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With their hands tied, Aston Villa are outperforming a club who spent £446m in the summer and another who have splashed out £1.6bn in the last five years.

Liverpool, the Premier League champions who got recruitment badly wrong last summer, could yet catch Villa in the table, but both clubs are still primed to secure Champions League football next season.

That is in part thanks to Chelsea, who have slipped from contention after a torrid run, ensuring the Blues are no closer to where they want to be under BlueCo despite another £295m spent on players this season.

Villa meanwhile spent the least among Premier League clubs, while they are also 17th for net spend the last three years, a period in which they have juggled the restraints of profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) while playing European football.

You only have six guesses for the six clubs topping net spend in that time. It is of course the Big Six, with Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool all north of £320m and Chelsea £188m.

Premier League net spend

• 1. Arsenal – £409m
• 2. Tottenham – £405m
• 3. Man Utd – £392m
• 4. Man City – £367m
• 5. Liverpool – £322m
• 6. Chelsea – £188m
• —
• 17. Aston Villa – £42m

Last three years per Transfermarkt

Villa’s £42m is more than four times lower than Chelsea, and almost 10 times less than relegation-threatened Spurs, an indication of how much the Midlands club have had to rein it in after a £130m net spend the previous three years (their outlay was helped significantly by selling Jack Grealish for £100m in 2021).

Now the Big Six in all-but name given Villa and Newcastle United have both disrupted the established order in recent seasons, Tottenham’s plight is a particular reminder that money is no guarantee of success.

And yet it stings Villa to know they could not have spent as freely, nor as they would have hoped, more wisely, without being punished.

The rules are there to stop this league from becoming a state-owned or multi-billionaire’s playground, but the fact this door only closed after Chelsea and City reached the summit is why theories abound about the league protecting its wealthiest assets while inflicting pain on others.

Only Everton and Nottingham Forest have been deducted points in the Premier League for breaches in the PSR era, while in March Chelsea were fined £10.75m after admitting to secret payments over a seven-year period when owned by Roman Abramovich.

Chelsea’s “proactive self-reporting” and “exceptional cooperation” were noted by the Premier League as it considered various sanctions.

Few would argue against a £10.75m fine being short change for billionaires, while ever fewer need reminding that 130 charges still loom over Manchester City, all of which they strongly deny.

Co-operating has led to drastic measures. Last year both Chelsea and Villa were fined for breaching Uefa’s financial rules. They also both sold their women’s teams to their respective parent companies in order to comply with PSR.

But despite those similarities, Chelsea and Villa are on either side of the door, with the latter’s ambition shackled because they were not owned by a person or entity with vast wealth early enough.

Villa head coach Unai Emery has been vocal about such restrictions. Ahead of their season opener against Newcastle, the Spaniard noted both sides are “clubs doing good management, who will never be allowed to dream” in his programme notes.

Defender Ezri Konsa said PSR “killed” Villa last year, while both Tyrone Mings and John McGinn bemoaned the loss of boyhood Villan Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle.

“It seems to be the way football is set up these days,” McGinn said.

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Frustrations have been tempered and words carefully chosen, but really Villa should be angrier.

They are fourth with PSR in place. They pushed Arsenal and Manchester City close in the winter, and though their title ambitions faded, they are edging closer to a second Champions League campaign in three years and are three games away from winning the Europa League.

All this while being held back, thus underlining both the strength of their greatest asset, Emery, and the reality that we will never truly know what heights they could have reached under his watch had they been freer to strengthen where he saw fit.

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SELHURST PARK — The wait for Brennan Johnson to fulfil the expectations of his £35m move to Crystal Palace continues.

Since arriving as Palace’s club-record signing in January, before being trumped in the same window by Jorgen Strand Larsen, Johnson’s attacking account has been flimsy. 

There has been a consistent absence of end product from the Welshman, who ventures into promising positions but stops short of delivering the final ball or applying the finishing touch. That lack of quality has been a thread running through his nearly four-month stay at Palace, with the forward failing to score in 19 appearances and registering just two assists.

Against West Ham on Monday night, he should have netted his first Palace goal. An exquisite cross from Jefferson Lerma offered Johnson a free header less than 10 yards from goal, but the 24-year-old got his angles carelessly wrong and guided extremely wide of the target. It was the best chance of a relatively drab affair, as Johnson’s panicked header epitomised the disappointment of his early career in red and blue.

A foolish yellow card on El Hadji Malick Diouf followed. Although there was a hint of his quality, receiving the ball from Yeremy Pino before taking a touch and releasing a prompt effort narrowly wide of the post. On the whole, however, he struggled to have the desired impact.

His manager, Oliver Glasner, papered over the cracks in his post-match press conference — insisting Johnson’s performance marked progress as he attacked areas and occupied spaces he had previously struggled to, while demonstrating a better grasp of Palace’s defensive habits.

“He was a constant threat,” Glasner said. “It was his best performance out of possession; the job he did was amazing. In the last games, he didn’t come into great situations, so it was a great step in the right direction. The first step is getting into good areas and getting chances, then the next is to convert. When I see how he finishes in training, I am pretty sure he will score a few goals before the end of the season.”

In some ways, Glasner was right. This was an improvement, although it is more of an indictment of Johnson’s sluggish start than a glowing endorsement of his display against West Ham. Notwithstanding that Palace paid a hefty sum for attacking results, not defensive traits. 

There is little invention, he is not overly progressive, has little flair to beat a man and does not carry the ball — making him appear like a passenger. He has crossing ability, which he demonstrated at times against West Ham, but there must be a more concerted effort to find him in those wide areas to get the best out of him. 

There is merit in the argument that Johnson requires time to adjust to Glasner’s system, which utilises narrower attackers rather than wingers, with his experience coming out wide. But that is why it beggars belief that Palace spent £35m on him midway through the season when there is little time to bed in a new signing who is essentially learning on the job. The time to adjust – especially within a hectic European schedule – is non-existent. 

A mid-season fix, especially when making a club-record outlay, should be compatible with the style of play to improve the chances of an expeditious impact. After all, Johnson was signed as Palace had a shortfall in attack from the start of the campaign. Midway through the season, the recruitment should have been much more considered, with a quick result in mind. Instead, the discourse is whether Palace have wasted £35m.

Johnson may benefit from Glasner’s departure in the summer, should Palace opt for a manager who prefers wingers to inside attackers. He is more accustomed to playing out wide and timing his blistering runs to the back post, losing his man to finish clinically. There have been very few opportunities to demonstrate that efficient part of his game, which enabled him to score 18 goals in 51 appearances under Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham Hotspur last season. 

That may still come in a Palace shirt, and a reset in the summer, accompanied by a full pre-season, could serve him well. But the signs have been uninspiring. 

As Palace continue to contend in Europe, Glasner is intent on using his attacking options in the squad to keep it fresh: starting Johnson in the last two Premier League games, with Ismaila Sarr having played in Europe. With Shakhtar Donetsk on the horizon, opportunities are likely to continue as Palace seek Conference League glory – the onus is on Johnson to start taking his chances.

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A year can change the direction of your whole life. On 18 April 2025, manager Omar Riza first apologised for calling Cardiff City supporters clueless and was then sacked after a defeat that effectively relegated the club to the third tier.

On 18 April 2026, Cardiff City confirmed their promotion back to the Championship. So much of this club’s recent existence has felt fated by its own incompetence. A little jolt of positive serendipity is to be welcomed. What is this weird feeling? Is it excitement?

A cynic might remark that the pre-season title favourites have finished second; beware celebrating the achievement of meeting expectations But only a fool could make that conclusion here. A year or so ago, Cardiff City were broken.

When I came here in December 2024, a 2-0 home defeat to Preston North End devoid of any modicum of seasonal cheer, it was one of the most depressing live football experiences I could remember: half-empty stadium, fully empty bank of goodwill.

The Vincent Tan experience had reached its nadir. Cardiff fell into the bottom three and would end the season as the third best team in Wales.

It could easily have got worse still; League One offered no guarantees. In that context, promotion at a canter – Cardiff have been in the top two since the start of December and scored three or more in 14 league games – has become an unlikely cleansing detox.

If this is any one person’s triumph, it is Brian Barry-Murphy’s. Cardiff don’t do well with managers: you have to go back to Neil Warnock in 2016 for the last time they appointed one that reached 70 matches in charge.

For all that the hierarchy here is rightly scrutinised, they took an educated gamble on a man with no first-team management experience bar at Rochdale for two years until 2021. It has paid off double.

Barry-Murphy has done everything right. His man-management has been exemplary, his tactics relatively simple and effective, his use of substitutes improved all season and his sense to buy into the fan culture smart given the obvious disconnect between supporters and club when he arrived.

But his greatest trick was to understand that there was a USP within the fabric of this club that had been abandoned far too readily by his predecessors. The most basic geography lesson: this is the only professional club in a capital city with a wider population of almost 500,000 people.

It wasn’t being utilised. Last season, only two of Cardiff’s 24 most regular starters were Welsh. Of all the wastage here then and before, it was the degradation of that connection between place and club that made the least sense.

Inevitably, many players left after relegation. But rather than replacing with like-for-like on a sliding scale of quality, Cardiff chose to sign only three players (two of them on loan). Barry-Murphy, with his history of youth development, was happy to promote from within.

This season, 26 players have appeared for Cardiff in the league. Nine of them are Welsh and none of those are older than 24. In the four latest Wales squads from Under-17 to senior, Cardiff had 19 players. No wonder that Craig Bellamy says that Barry-Murphy’s management is “like a dream to me”.

In doing so, Barry-Murphy has overhauled the squad without demanding investment. The ninth oldest team in the Championship last season has become the second youngest in the EFL in 2025-26. It is a remarkable turnaround to combine with consistent performance.

Newsflash: football supporters like this stuff and like it even more when the team is winning. Most of it is subconscious, but not all: you see a young man score a winner who grew up around the corner; your kid sees a role model and a pathway every time that badge gets kissed. How can they not inspire you to want more of the same and want to see it happen? Cardiff’s attendances have gone up in the third tier.

It doesn’t take much to fall back in love. Supporters don’t want to fight with each other, whatever social media tells you. They don’t want to walk down Leckwith Road full of fear for what they might see or full of dread because they already know. They don’t want to live on the edge of mutiny about how the club is being run.

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But when your club has been mistreated and allowed to rot before, trust eternally remains fragile as a means of emotional self-preservation and an early warning system. Cardiff City supporters aren’t necessarily waiting for things to go wrong, but they understandably require a drip feed of reasons to believe that things are still going right.

So here’s the thing: this has to be only the start. Barry-Murphy has to get his way, to continue this project as he sees fit, to play an active role in recruitment that avoids the magpie-style shopping of previous years that got Cardiff into their mess.

Get that right, and this can absolutely be a new era in which the club is representative of its location and its people, is helping the national team and is standing on its own two feet rather than being forced to its knees by self-inflicted blows. Cardiff can stand for something again beyond Tan’s misguided broken dream.

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Manchester City are the neutrals’ pick to win the Premier League title apparently, with a complicated concoction of reasons only strengthened by Arsenal having more rivals and objectors to their style of play.

But on Sunday, City made it harder for the neutral to have a favourite.

The water bottles being sold as “Arsenal tears” ahead of kick-off may have been one person’s idea of fun, but it spoke of a wider pandering to the Football Twitter brigade that has made this race nauseating with a month still to go.

Television cameras showing the City bottle fan at Chelsea the weekend prior kickstarted this little sideshow, but the arrogance merely ramped up after the 2-1 win over Arsenal.

The “Panic on the Streets of London” banner, unfurled at full-time, came just as Erling Haaland was giving side-eye to the camera, the glance and smug smile saying more than any interview could – all before he broke into a rendition of Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling”.

Given the importance of this match, and given Haaland had just won the match-defining battle against a rattled Gabriel, it was a justified response, and a continuation of the Norwegian’s belief that Arsenal need to “stay humble” given their silverware to bravado ratio is heavily skewed.

It was also further proof cockiness is earned. Bottles, banners and songs are only allowed with a month to go if you have won six of the last eight Premier League campaigns and a treble in that time. They will do it again because they have done it before, and the idea this is now City’s to lose is difficult to argue against based on momentum and recent history.

And it hits even harder because of what Arsenal have to show for their efforts under Mikel Arteta. The Gunners have topped the table for almost 100 more days than City since the Spaniard took charge in 2019, and yet they have never topped it at the right time, adding to this reputation as bottlers.

Never change, @ErlingHaaland pic.twitter.com/QtqYkq5F5P

— Premier League (@premierleague) April 20, 2026

The players will be more than aware. “It’s not done,” Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice declared from the Etihad turf, and all this – the hate, City’s arrogance, the belief it is now in their rivals’ hands – must now be their fuel to get over the line. It has to be.

And it is therefore worth remembering the title is still in Arsenal’s hands in equal measure. If City win at Burnley on Wednesday, both sides will be tied on 70 points with five games to go. The goal difference will be close, and it then becomes a straight shootout based not only on wins but the scorelines as well.

Two home games await Arsenal, against two out-of-form sides in Newcastle United and Fulham, and as well another home game against Burnley, it could be the two trips closer to home, against West Ham United and Crystal Palace, that decide the Gunners’ fate.

Remaining Premier League fixtures

Arsenal                             Man City

• Newcastle (H)             Burnley (A)
• Fulham (H)                   Everton (A)
• West Ham (A)              Brentford (H)
• Burnley (H)                   Bournemouth (A)
• Crystal Palace (A)       Aston Villa (H)
•                                          TBC: Crystal Palace (H)

City, meanwhile, head to Everton and Bournemouth either side of hosting Brentford. All three teams very much have Europe in their sights, with seven teams separated by just three points from sixth (Chelsea) down to Fulham (12th).

Opposition with something to play for could therefore have a bearing on this title race, but overall it comes to down to performances and mentality.

This Saturday’s hosting of Newcastle will show us whether Rice’s words ring true, or whether the fear of another trophyless season is eclipsing the belief that Arsenal can finally end the wait.

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The unofficial line is that Newcastle United will review Eddie Howe‘s position at the end of the season.

A warts-and-all review, overseen by chief executive David Hopkinson and director of football Ross Wilson, was always planned at the end of the season but given the paucity of Premier League performances it suddenly feels make-or-break for under-fire Howe.

The i Paper was told recently that Newcastle “simply don’t have enough information” to make a definitive call right now. Hopkinson’s recent remarks at an accounts briefing raised eyebrows but, all told, were an accurate reflection of his position.

Howe retains plenty of support at St James’ Park but questions are being asked – and past achievements are “no free pass” for the current underachievement. A board meeting in two weeks, with PIF governer and Newcastle chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, may quicken things but no one really knows. In short: this is a moment of genuine peril for Howe, and suddenly no one is talking in absolutes about him being in charge in August.

But it is also a moment of real danger for Newcastle, too. Slipping out of European contention – barring an unexpected shift in momentum at Arsenal next weekend – will be financially costly but not nearly as damaging as letting the season drift into toxicity.

That feels like a huge threat now. There have been boos at each of Newcastle’s last two home games and the commitment of some inside the Magpies’ dressing room is now coming under close scrutiny. You suspect that will only get worse as the uncertainty around Howe increases. Better to lance it within weeks – decide definitively one way or the other – than let it limp into the early weeks of the close season, when other clubs will have made their moves.

The club is begging for change and it is coming. Recruitment is already pivoting under Wilson, whose relationship with Howe and conviction in the manager is his best protection against flat-lining form. I hear optimistic noises about the profile of player they are attempting to sign this summer, even if there will be painful sales to absorb. An optimistic take is that Howe comes along on that journey, chastened by poor form and convinced by Wilson that a part-data, part-global recruitment policy will arm his team better.

The version of events that lays the blame for Newcastle’s problems at the feet of the players negates to mention that Howe has had more influence than almost any manager over the composition of the squad. The chaos that saw a director of football quit and a chief executive out of action wasn’t his fault but Anthony Elanga, Aaron Ramsdale and Yoane Wissa were his picks.

Howe’s tendency to opt for tried and tested in the transfer market brought Newcastle to Ramsdale, who isn’t good enough. Sunderland plucked Robin Roefs from the Eredivise while Manchester United took Senne Lammens from the Belgian Pro League. Newcastle should have been shopping in those sort of markets.

One Premier League rival summed Newcastle up in one word this weekend: tired. Making a decision on Howe’s future now is the first step to re-energising a club on the brink of crisis.

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