Todd Boehly’s Chelsea plan has no direction and will lead to Graham Potter becoming the fall guy
I’m sorry, you can sit there and play with all your silly machines as much as you like because the best way to judge Graham Potter’s five months at Chelsea is not through any damning numbers, but his touchline demeanour.
During those early matches, dressed either in a black suit or purely black outfit, Potter’s glow-up left him looking like a Bond villain’s henchman modelling for GQ. Now look at him: slumped forward on the bench, puffy face with the eyes of a man who has recently attempted to watch all of YouTube in one sitting. This job is eating him.
The best moment of Potter’s tenure, which will presumably either come to an end very soon or just soon, was his press conference on 15 January, on the day that Chelsea signed their 13th first-team player of the season.
Asked about Todd Boehly’s Supermarket Sweep dash, Potter paused for a moment and said with glorious weariness: “You can’t just sign players.”
Graham, you silly sod: it turns out that you can. Enter Boehly, stage right, repeatedly asking Potter if he hasn’t got room for just one more mint. Oh sir, it’s only wafer thin and with amortisation we can basically say that it cost us nothing.
Chelsea then signed another player on 20 January, for £30m. And another on 29 January, for £25m. And another on 31 January, for £107m. I don’t think anyone’s listening, Graham.
The temptation here is to seek logic, perhaps even a secret strategy. The long contracts must make sense because of FFP (but what happens if they don’t work out and you’re left still paying for players you don’t want?). The glut of signings must be a masterstroke because Chelsea must have needed them (even though they now have too many in certain positions).
The mega spend must have been a smart PR move from a new owner. And governing it all, the manager who excelled at improving players through coaching over the long term is being asked, nay expected, to hit the ground running. This is all 4D chess, right? Right?
Probably not, on reflection. At Brighton and at Ostersund, Potter preached the virtues of alignment between each element of a football club: owner, recruitment, manager, players, supporters. It is hard to envisage a club in European football where there is currently less cohesion.
The manager got players he clearly didn’t ask for; the players look unable – or unwilling – to do what Potter is asking for; supporters are in mutiny and the most abhorrent of them have sent death threats to the manager and his family. How was the play, Mrs Lincoln?
Chelsea’s January transfers
In: Enzo Fernandez (£106.8m from Benfica), Mykhailo Mudryk (£88.5m from Shakhtar Donetsk), Joao Felix (£10m loan fee from Atletico Madrid), Benoit Badiashile (£35m from Monaco), David Datro Fofana (£10.5m from Molde), Andrey Santos (£18m from Vasco Da Gama), Noni Madueke (£26m from PSV), Malo Gusto (£26m from Lyon)
Out: Malo Gusto (loan to Lyon), Bashir Humphreys (loan to Paderborn), Cesare Casadei (undisclosed to Reading), Jude Soonsup-Bell (undisclosed to Tottenham), Jorginho (£12m to Arsenal)
Enzo Fernandez is Chelsea’s club-record signing (Photo: Getty)
Nobody could have predicted the current level of grim tribalism and entitlement, but did we not all see this coming? “Brighton created a system of scouting at recruitment that maximised his strengths as a coach,” we wrote at the time of the appointment.
“He was, very simply, allowed to get on with his job. He is a fine coach, but a fine coach in the perfect environment. Can we be confident the same will happen at Chelsea, whatever the bland epithets used to welcome him?” No. Instead they made it harder for him.
This would all make a little more sense if Potter was merely a patsy, an expensive filler until the next ego-controlling gun-for-hire manager comes along to take Chelsea up the league before being sacked less than 18 months later. But that does not seem to be the case.
There is still faith that Potter will turn this emergency around inside the club, despite nothing in his past to suggest that he fits the bill, despite Chelsea sinking closer to the bottom three than top four and despite Chelsea’s support currently drowning him in a toxic custard.
Somebody – and we will have to assume it was Boehly – seemed to assume that you could take a horde of ludicrously expensive players from across Europe, squeeze them into a squad without putting any existing noses out of joint and then add a proven project manager and huzzah! “This guy improves players, so now he can improve the best players,” Boehly presumably mused. “Why has nobody thought of this before?”
And so now Chelsea feel like a control experiment. You take the coach who improved players but over an extended period of time, far away from the constant cries of crisis that might follow a defeat elsewhere. You hand him a bunch of expensive ingredients, like Ready Steady Cook meets Harrods food hall, to raise expectations amongst supporters despite knowing that the coach would have preferred time to assess the current squad. You note that the coach struggled to make his former team efficient in finishing chances so, crucially, you don’t buy him an actual striker. That last one is a lovely touch, to be fair.
Chelsea’s results in 2023
Nottingham Forest 1-1 Chelsea
Chelsea 0-1 Man City
Man City 4-0 Chelsea
Fulham 2-1 Chelsea
Chelsea 1-0 Crystal Palace
Liverpool 0-0 Chelsea
Chelsea 0-0 Fulham
West Ham 1-1 Chelsea
Borussia Dortmund 1-0 Chelsea
Chelsea 0-1 Southampton
Tottenham 2-0 Chelsea
Except that with experiments there is normally some implied unknowns or jeopardy – what are we going to learn today? This Chelsea season is the scientific equivalent of dropping a large concrete ball off the edge of a tall building to determine whether it will cause damage to the empty car that sits 35 floors below. And the car is a Ferrari. And it’s Todd Boehly’s.
This will soon be just more Chelsea history, Potter will become another fall guy from a club that has become addicted to short-termism because of the success that strategy has delivered. It will cause ripples: Potter’s career will need a recharge, the promotion of managers from non-elite English clubs to the elite may be blocked up again, Chelsea will seek another shortcut redemption arc.
But mostly it will reinforce what we have always known and Boehly needs to learn: it’s a hundred times easier for a plan to come together when everyone can tell what the plan even is.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/E9aiuWq
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