In Los Angeles, where Todd Boehly has spent most of his time as sporting billionaire extraordinaire, they say “a bad day in LA is better than a good day anywhere else”.
It used to feel that way at Stamford Bridge too, where Chelsea’s mini-crises were laughable in the face of clubs with real problems. Roman Abramovich sacked managers who had just won the Champions League (Roberto Di Matteo), who had briefly slipped out of the top four (Andre Villas-Boas), or for finishing second and ending the season trophyless, despite winning the double the previous year (Carlo Ancelotti).
Graham Potter has been promised things will be different under Boehly. The word around the club remains that the ownership has no intention of changing head coach imminently. And Potter is a marvellous marionette, accustomed to dealing out reality checks at Brighton and last week reminding fans that the Abramovich era is over. Chelsea’s horizons have changed, he cautioned, and not necessarily for the better.
“That is hard for some people to get their head around because for 20 years Chelsea was one thing and now all of a sudden it’s different,” he said.
“Yet people still think back to what happened in the past twenty years. That is normal but it is completely different. The reason for me to take the job was the chance to shape a club that is in a massive transitional period.”
Simultaneously, it can feel a little like nothing has changed at all. Boehly has sanctioned £350m of spending and there is more to come. Much of it appears at odds with a club investing faith in a 47-year-old English manager navigating a host of injuries, developing young players, all while trying to fit seven different forwards into his attack. Joao Felix has just signed his loan deal. Why? You can almost imagine Potter breathing a sigh of relief when Enzo Fernandez, another of the club’s £112m targets, appeared to gesture that he was “staying here” after scoring for Benfica on Tuesday.
It is not a good moment for Boehly’s PR. His signings have attracted criticism – most of them haven’t even made sense. He has reportedly stepped down as the club’s interim sporting director, ill-equipped to fill the shoes of Marina Granovskaia. New recruits Christopher Vivell and Paul Winstanley will take charge.
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It has been convenient for Boehly to talk the talk of a “new Chelsea”, his mission statement when he took over promising “commitment to developing the youth squad” and to “invest in the club for the long term”. That made Potter a decent fit and perhaps the one man capable of diverting Chelsea from the previous model: hire a top European head coach like Thomas Tuchel, enjoy immediate success, sack them at the first signs of trouble.
Yet underwriting his success at Brighton was the club itself, its data-driven, unique recruitment style and significantly lower expectations. Whether Potter can survive Chelsea’s slump will be another test of whether Boehly can walk the walk. Their last nine games read: thrashings by Brighton and Man City, two more defeats to City, losses against Arsenal and Newcastle to reaffirm how far they are behind this season’s title contenders, a narrow victory over Dinamo Zagreb, a win over Bournemouth, and failing to beat Nottingham Forest.
That makes it a particularly inopportune time to play Fulham, who are currently everything Chelsea are not. Well-drilled, benefiting from an excellent summer of recruitment and a clear philosophy under Marco Silva. The Whites head into the west London derby on Thursday night three places above their neighbours, outside the top six only on goal difference and level on points with Liverpool.
For Boehly, there could not be a worse time for a game of such significance with Potter on the brink. Sack him, and where do Chelsea turn? Mauricio Pochettino? Luis Enrique? In that case, should they just have kept Tuchel in the first place?
After watching Manchester City maul Chelsea in the FA Cup, Pep Guardiola made a personal plea about his Chelsea counterpart’s future: “Give him time. I know in the big clubs the results are important but I would say give him time… We needed time in my first season. It wasn’t the same in Barcelona because I had Messi there.”
Monday marked four months to the day that Potter was appointed. Time is one thing he may not get much more of, but it’s not the only reason Boehly has hesitated wielding the axe when Abramovich would have done so by now. He bought the club less than a year ago, and Chelsea are already running out of places to go next.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/pMZvyAL
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