Graham Potter has all the components to create a menacing Chelsea machine. It is just the instruction manual is taking rather longer to plough through than he expected.
Never has a team needed a reset more than the Blues before the World Cup, given they had gone five league games without a win for the first time in a decade prior to the Qatar tournament.
Potter’s reign had started so well, but as the results started to go south, he changed his lineup more often than Fleetwood Mac in search of a winning formula.
Against Bournemouth on Tuesday, the Chelsea boss went with a 4-2-3-1 system and at long last it seemed to suit the personnel down to the ground.
Then, as Chelsea strolled into a 16th minute lead against Nottingham Forest through Raheem Sterling, with the same players, minus the injured Reece James, in the same formation, Potter, the Solihull tinkerman, must have thought he had cracked it.
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Anonymous Azpilicueta, tepid Pulisic and superb Boly - Forest 1-1 Chelsea player ratings01 January, 2023But as Forest battled back into the contest, deservedly earning a draw that leaves Chelsea eighth in the table, Potter would have soon come to the realisation another night in bed with that meaty manual lay in wait.
Chelsea have made 61 changes to their starting line-up this term, more than any other team. Despite all that chopping and changing, the most worrying element to all that upheaval is that in January, 16 games into the season, not only does Potter not know his best XI, he does not even know where best to place them on the pitch.
The lack of continuity is particularly damaging to their goals for column. Chelsea have netted just 20 times this season, 19 fewer than at the same juncture last term, and one fewer than Erling Haaland has mustered alone for Manchester City.
The front four that took to the pitch in the Nottingham drizzle, on paper, looked like one that could start to fire them back up the table. Mason Mount was excellent in the No 10 role against Bournemouth, Kai Havertz registered a goal and an assist in that win, while Christian Pulisic and Sterling both looked at home on the flanks, rather than centrally as both have been deployed at times under Potter.
Things started well at Forest, with Mount’s runs proving difficult to pick up early on, as he fired over from a good position with only two minutes on the clock.
In the second half, however, the front four, and those who came on to try galvanise Chelsea, offered next to nothing in attack, as the away side registered one shot, off target, in the entire half.
Chelsea in fact average just over 11 shots per game in the Premier League, their lowest ratio since Opta records started in 1997-98. With the players they have at their disposal, after spending circa £180m on attacking talent in the last two seasons, creating fewer shooting opportunities than bottom side Southampton is not good enough.
Losing James, the one true world class player in the Chelsea ranks, would hurt any side, but a squad that consists of two of England’s leading lights in Mount and Sterling, the United States’ best striker for a generation, Germany’s frontline forward and a former Arsenal hitman no stranger to finding the net should have more than 20 goals collectively from 16 games.
In a season of such transition on and off the pitch, Potter needs time to take stock of the situation, and with many of their top four rivals looking in fine fettle, the Blues may be best placed to write off this term and get a grasp of the monumental task ahead of the new boss.
Time is of course not always afforded to Chelsea managers, but Potter needs longer than many of his predecessors given he is seemingly working with a squad bursting with supreme talent, only with too many square pegs to put in round holes.
Hakim Ziyech is a prime example of a player who could have a real impact at other clubs, just as he did with Morocco at the World Cup, but just cannot find a home in his Chelsea side. The bigger problem is he is not alone.
The January transfer window could in fact be a dangerous time for a manager looking to settle into the role and work out how to turn things around, with an owner more than happy to spend, spend, spend, but not necessarily on players of the manager’s choice.
Potter does not need more parts to complicate the assembly. The biggest headache is just how to set this team up to see it fulfill the potential it promised at the start of the campaign.
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