What’s wrong with Chelsea? And how can the club solve this mess?

Another game, another defeat for Chelsea, with Monday seeing the Club World Cup champions falling 3-1 to relegation-threatened Nottingham Forest at Stamford Bridge, their 6th league defeat in a row!

So… What’s wrong with Chelsea?

Breaking this down might take a while, but we’ll do our best to summarize for you

• Recruitment policy – The owners of The Blues, Clearlake Capital and the Todd Boehly-led BlueCo, implemented a policy where they sought to purchase young, promising talent to extremely long contracts, with the aim of ensuring that in the event the players don’t deliver on the expectations set, the club could still avoid huge losses thanks to high resale value for their “assets” (for more info on that, click here). The problem with that is they’re seeing this exclusively as a business and not as a football club. For one thing, their policy’s direction means more often than not, the club won’t be bringing in experience to mentor, or galvanize the core of the dressing room, and for another, there is no guarantee they’ll recoup fees paid when eventually offloading some of these talents. However, that might be about to change. (More on that here).
• Chelsea’s stadium dilemma – For years, the West London-based club has been aiming to compete with the biggest clubs in the world financially, and key to that has been either redeveloping Stamford Bridge or moving to a brand-new ground. Unfortunately, the longer this takes, the more expensive the options become, especially if the club wants to remain in that particular section of West London. (You can read more about that here).

• The hiring of managers – With the aforementioned hiring policy in place, one thing a club like Chelsea would have definitely benefited from would have been a stable, high-quality backroom staff and a competent manager in place for the long haul. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case, with the club having had 5 full-time managers under the new owners (Tuchel, Potter, Pochettino, Maresca, and, most recently, Rosenior, with a 6th one on the way), who have obviously failed to provide that solid base needed for the club. Which leads us to…

• The owners – The leadership struggle at Chelsea hasn’t found a way to make it work. Pure and simple. They approached the idea of running the club from the wrong angle and mindset, have made a lot of losses in their time in charge, and are not ticking off key milestones or achievements on their checklist. For this not to become a bad investment, they have to quickly find a long-term solution and implement something new and better suited to the club (hiring the right football people, for starters), find a remedy to the stadium headache, and add experience and stability to the playing body to have a better chance of succeeding. Or cut their losses early and sell the club to people who can run it better. No shame in that

What should be the way forward?

The club is suffering from a combination of lofty, seemingly unrealistic expectations based on its current situation and pressure stemming from previous successes, particularly from the Roman Abramovich era. There needs to be an acceptance across the playing field (forgive the pun) that this is a transition period, and rather than looking at instant gains, the long-term progression of Chelsea Football Club should be the goal.

Have your say!

Are you a fan of The Blues, simply a lover of football, or simply a fan of the blog or the article? Do let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, and don’t forget to share with a friend or two!

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