Chelsea: A State-of-play
Thiago Silva applauds Chelsea’s away support at full-time.
There have been a lot of eventful, depressing and exhilarating results for Chelsea this season that felt perfect to provide a reaction to. A 4-1 loss away at Newcastle ends a run of three games that see to perfectly sum up where Chelsea are as a team right now, both good and bad.
This run began at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. A scintillating first ten minutes from Spurs set the scene for what could be a long night for Chelsea. 5 disallowed goals, 2 red cards, and a Nicolas Jackson hat-trick later, Spurs had unravelled against their blue foes again. Losing 4-1.
Just 6 days later, Chelsea welcomed the defending English and European Champions, treble-winners Manchester City to Stamford Bridge. Another all-time classic that saw Chelsea go toe-to-toe with the world’s best side, 4-4 it ended.
Finally, a saturday afternoon post-international break visit to St. James’ Park awaited. A first half where Raheem Sterling’s free-kick pegged Alexander Isak’s opener back, was completely soured by a naive, immature second-half disaster that saw Chelsea leaving on the end of a thrashing.
The main question about this three-game run is how many steps forward did Chelsea take? Of course the answer is subjective, but it more than sums up what is going wrong and right at Stamford Bridge this season.
The main problem is that there is no hiding from scrutiny. Determined to make their mark, Boehly-Clearlake have spent an enormous amount, and made an enormous amount from buying and selling players over the last 18 months. We can get into the endless abyss of whether that money was spent well or not in a few years, but some of the themes of their business are important to take into account.
Chelsea have gone from being one of the oldest teams in the league, to one of the youngest in the space of one summer. They have also reduced their wage bill by £80 million a year. Whatever you think about the speed and approach to their business, the strategy is clear. Boehly-Clearlake want to build a more sustainable, long-term model that invests in the future rather than the present. And that is the main difference to their predecessors.
Roman Abramovich bought in managers and players to win league titles and Champions Leagues that very moment. However, Chelsea’s lack of competitiveness in the Premier League since their last title in 2017, shows that the previous strategy was not working anymore.
The media pile on that came as a result of Chelsea’s outrageous spending was somewhat lazy in suggesting that it is ‘scattergun’. Ignoring the sums paid. It’s very clear that Chelsea only wanted players under the age of 23, and their priority was to get rid of older, high earning, underperforming players in the process.
Kai Havertz, Jorginho, Christian Pulisic, Matteo Kovacic, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Hakim Ziyech represented lucrative investments for very little return. The new ownership were prepared to move on from them and invest in rebuilding the squad. Chelsea now have a squad filled with high-potential and young talent. A squad that, when coupled with a coach like Mauricio Pochettino, excels in chaos, but becomes disjointed in order.
Their losses to Nottingham Forest, Brentford, Aston Villa and Newcastle were games of order. Chelsea’s underlying metrics, technical level and structure meant they only needed to execute their game plan without error to win. This young squad’s naivety and immaturity saw them lose these games despite holding all the cards in them. They executed their game plan well in the first halves of these games, but fell apart due to individual mistakes, pressure, self doubt and frantic urgency.
Pochettino’s side had the tools, the gamestate and the structure to get results from these games, but their lack of experience cost them. The lack of experience being a byproduct of their transfer strategy. Pochettino provided many quotes throughout the summer regarding the club’s strategy and implied that he was looking for Premier League experience. Despite coming from Manchester City, Cole Palmer arrived with little Premier League minutes to his name.
The lack of experience and immaturity is actually a sign that Pochettino is relatively in-tune with the squad dynamic. He demanded that experience be brought in - it wasn’t brought in - the absence of it is losing them games.
The club’s reported interest in Brentford striker Ivan Toney ahead of the January transfer window is no doubt music to Pochettino’s ears, but would his introduction be a panic response to a poor start and lack of potency in front of goal? The style he has played at Brentford does not bring much evidence that he would be effective in one of the most ball dominant teams in the Premier League.
Napoli’s Victor Osimhen is without a doubt one of the the most lethal strikers in Europe. It remains to be seen whether he can be one of few strikers to succeed at Stamford Bridge if the move does happen.
The striker debate is more a more in depth discussion for another day. One that will likely evolve with the form of Nicolas Jackson and the impact of Christopher Nkunku’s return from injury in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, Chelsea need to chalk Saturday’s disaster in the North East down to a bad day at the office. They got through the first half all square, at a place both Arsenal and City have seen defeat this season, and unravelled as a result of poor set piece defending, and mistakes from Reece James and Thiago Silva. Things that are relatively fixable.
There is nothing like a Chelsea fanbase pile on, X felt that after the game on Saturday. Head-loss would have been compiled watching Kai Havertz score his first open-play goal for Arsenal later that evening to send his new side top of the league.
But it’s important to remember where Chelsea were and where they are now. They have played four of the the traditional big six this season and not lost. The players are clearly buying into Pochettino’s approach, and everyone at the club seems to be on the same page.
Unfortunately for Chelsea’s hierarchy, they can’t fill the squad with raw, young talent, despite the coach asking for experience, watch that side beat themselves due to their inexperience multiple times and then storm into Pochettino’s office at the end of the season asking why he didn’t get them in the Champions League. The gaps the coach identifies are costing them, sacking him would not be the answer.
Much of the fanbase looks to compare what Poch has done with what Ange Postecoglu is doing at Spurs. Ironically, Postecoglu lost his star signing James Maddison to injury in the game against Chelsea, (Maddison coming into Spurs with bags of Premier League experience) and has lost every game in his absence.
The ‘process’ drum does not need to banged anymore, we are at the point where you get it or you don’t. Chelsea will likely end up in a European place this season and will be a very successful side in the years to come. The silver bullet Abramovich used to fix your pain does not work these days, Chelsea are actually going to ahem to build something this time.