Crisis is back at Chelsea in a big way, renesting with admirable speed and efficiency, as if good vibes were only ever renting the place out. The supporters who sang “We’ve got our Chelsea back” at St Mary’s after a 5-0 win in early December are now plotting a protest when Southampton visit next week. Emotional whiplash has become an occupational hazard of fandom.
Much of the conversation around this protest seems to centre on what Chelsea’s problem actually is. The working title is “BlueCo Out”, aimed at the ownership, but you’ll find voices hoping for the downfall of sporting directors Lawrence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, head coach Enzo Maresca and half the playing staff.
This reveals a lot. The foundations have been stripped since May 2022, leaving only trace elements of the Roman Abramovich era here. What remains is a club led by co-owners who have never previously owned a football team, a squad with no outfield players over 27 and a manager who had coached one full season before joining.
No single component of this is inherently wrong, but the combination leaves nothing for fans to grab onto, no-one who can be trusted, no-one who has unquestionably proven their abilities. The jury is still out on every senior executive or coach, and the vast majority of the players.
When fear sets in, no voice has earned the authority to allay it or act as a safety net. Emotional attachment is frayed and fleeting, not helped by the extraordinary player turnover and overarching air of ephemerality behind every decision. In the void, crisis thrives.
The idea football clubs have souls is largely over-romanticised, psychological string to tie together a Trigger’s Broom rotation of faces and haircuts centred on a badge, stadium and colours, all of which are also ultimately changeable. But Chelsea have eschewed even any sense of identity, only really recognisable for their transfer policy. This is, at the very least, real.
But that doesn’t make it functional. For all the grim fascination about the great gamble on potential, solely buying the best 17 to 24-year-olds has never been done before because it doesn’t work. This is deeply flawed. Chelsea have not broken football, they have broken themselves in their dogmatic refusal to buy players regardless of their resale value.
Even at a human level, the foundations aren’t there – players are lacking the building blocks of experience, of having failed and learned how to overcome failure, of having lived for long enough to know when you’re doing it right. The squad’s two primary captains are Reece James, a leader by example rather than words, and Enzo Fernandez, who has emerged from his self-inflicted racism and transphobia storm concerningly unscathed but only just turned 24.
Speaking after Friday’s 3-0 defeat to Brighton, Chelsea’s fifth Premier League away match without a win and one in which they did not manage a shot on target, Joe Cole said: “I know from my experience, playing with experienced players around me as a young man was invaluable. It’s moments like the Brighton game where you need those experienced guys around you”.
Assistant coach Willy Caballero, himself in his second season coaching, had to tell Cole Palmer to thank the travelling fans at the Amex, assuming the role a senior player should or would have.
Less than a week earlier, Maresca had made a similar rookie error in admitting he was quietly pleased to be out of the FA Cup as it allows the club to focus on other competitions. This might have been true, but a more experienced manager would know better than to say it.
The furore over this basic truism exposed that fans have not accepted the party line that this increasingly sustained and irreversible decline is an inevitable step on the path to salvation.
There occasionally seems to be a collective amnesia about exactly what has gone into this Chelsea side, a temptation to write off the first £1bn as research funding, learning lessons the owners and sporting directors should have already known.
They have still spent £1.14bn to cure a still unidentifiable sickness, brought in 96 new players and let 88 go. This has been an exercise in excess built on piles of wastage, as morally objectionable as it is dysfunctional.
At what point does this, or did this, just become throwing good money after bad? At what point do the owners and sporting directors accept they were wrong? Just how hard an they double down before it becomes indefensible?
Chelsea are now sixth, behind Bournemouth and the likely Champions League threshold only on goal difference. The hope is that after their poorest run of the season – two wins in 10 – that a top-five finish should be secured just by returning to average.
But what is average for this unbalanced squad is unclear. With no striker available until April, an inexperienced goalkeeper and long-term defensive issues which amount to four clean sheets in 25 league games, a progression to the mean is not guaranteed.
20 points from the final 13 league matches is needed to match last season’s tally under Mauricio Pochettino, probably five-to-seven more for the top four. Chelsea still have to play Liverpool and Arsenal, visit Newcastle, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest.
Yet Champions League qualification would still be a dangerous achievement with this squad, which includes just four players to have played more than 10 games in the European top flight. As bizarre as it might seem, another overhaul is needed. Chelsea will only be able to start building the future they desire once the owners and sporting directors admit their dependence on youth is doing as much harm as good.
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