Opinion
One must wonder if in sacking Graham Potter six months into his tenure, Todd Boehly and the club’s ownership watched in disdain as Thomas Tuchel’s Bayern Munich romped to a 4-2 home win over Borussia Dortmund, sending the Bavarians back to the top of the Bundesliga ladder.
On the same day, Chelsea suffered a 2-0 home defeat to Aston Villa. With four wins this year, Potter exited the front door.
To begin the season the American Boehly possessed a widely loved, world-class, Champions League-winning figure guiding his club into the future, and yet, as a result of a spluttering present, sacked Tuchel with a long-term vision rolling through his mind.
The German was notoriously uncooperative with the way the new ownership wanted to run the club and so became the first victim of the new regime following a 1-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League.
His replacement, Graham Potter, was immediately shoehorned in with promises of a five-year plan. Theoretically, the appointment made sense. The Englishman is a bright young manager who proved his tactical nous at several different jobs across Europe, notably at Brighton, where he made the south coast club pretty to watch and tough to play.
A new manager bounce meant Chelsea won six of their first ten games under his guidance, before three straight defeats – to Arsenal and Newcastle in the league and City in the Carabao Cup – leading into the World Cup break foreshadowed the club’s prospects.
Since Lionel Messi raised the World Cup trophy high into the Qatari sky in December, Cheslea have been abysmal, winning five of 17, including a 2-0 defeat home win against Dortmund to progress deeper into the Champions League.
Thomas Tuchel with Chelsea (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)
In quite a few of these games, Potter’s men were admittedly good, enjoying large spells of possession, but an underlying issue bugging the manager since Brighton remained; the goals that evaded him on the south coast evaded him in the capital.
Chelsea couldn’t buy a goal, despite Enzo Fernandez for a British record fee, Joao Felix, Mykailo Mudryk, and Noni Madueke in January.
An important consideration to be harboured when passing final judgement on Potter’s tenure as Chelsea boss is the injury list he had to contend with.
For large spells he was often without Reece James, Ben Chilwell, and N’Golo Kante, Chelsea’s most important trident, as well as Edouard Mendy, Thiago Silva, and Mateo Kovacic amongst others.
This mixture of new signings and unavailable stalwarts proved problematic to Potter, who up to this point hadn’t dealt with a large squad. It seemed to cause him problems, and he hinted at that in January, stating:
“I think we’ve got to be not necessarily careful, but I think you’ve got to understand that we’ve got about 10 players unavailable. Obviously, you can’t just sign players to replace those because in the end, you have a squad of 30,” he said. Adding, “you have to do the right thing and the window is complicated in January.”
Potter eluded further to more worrying signs within the club’s recruitment process, explaining “if you’re in a position where over too small a period too many people are making recruitment decisions, it’s not really the recipe for success.”
But in the end his time at the club was undoubtedly an abject failure, no matter the injury list or recruitment ‘troubles’ the squad available is superior to their 11th place in the league.
For Chelsea’s new ownership, their gamble on the club’s future failed miserably, sending them into uncharted territory.
(Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)
Not even the ruthless oligarch Roman Abramovich sacked two managers in a season. A five-year plan which only lasted six months is not healthy for any club, no matter the stature, while Potter’s statements on the club’s recruitment procedures hint at larger issues which need resolution yesterday.
Many fans, already offside and confused at Tuchel’s sacking, will be even further offside and greatly confused. They’ll ask; has the last six months served a purpose?
In due time, these questions will receive responses one way or another, but for now Todd Boehly and his peers at the helm of one of football’s richest clubs must figure out where to from here, and who will tasked with driving the spluttering, taped together Ferrari Chelsea have become? Do they gamble with another young, granted more proven manager in Julian Nagelsmann?
Who, according to Fabrizio Romano, they’ve already contacted. Can they convince Pochettino to sever his ties with Spurs and switch to the blue edge of London? Is former treble winner Luis Enrique the man to steer the ship? Should they send a beacon out for Roberto Di Matteo to test if he’s available for a four-month managerial swansong?
It remains to be seen what the outcome of this farcical period will be, but what is clear is that anyone in a punter club with Boehly should immediately exit it.
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