Chelsea have been here before. They’ll be here again. The west Londoners are perhaps the most fluctuating of the traditional “big six” clubs. Champions League winners one minute, sacking the manager who won them the trophy the next. They’ve done that twice in the last decade. The Blues currently find themselves without a win in their last five domestic games under Graham Potter, the replacement for Champions League-winning manager Thomas Tuchel.
The misery was compounded on Wednesday when Manchester City put Chelsea to the sword in the Carabao Cup. The 2-0 defeat was not as humiliating as the 4-1 league reverse to Brighton & Hove Albion or as frustrating as the 1-0 defeat to rivals Arsenal. But being eliminated from a competition they came within a penalty shootout of winning last season still stings.
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If this result had come during an otherwise-solid run, it would have been put down to the vagaries of knockout football. These things happen, after all. Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United have also been eliminated during this round of fixtures. But when a result like this arrives during a rotten run of domestic form, it raises concerns.
We saw on countless occasions how Chelsea’s ownership would react to such concerns. Under previous incumbent Roman Abramovich, managers were given short shrift if results were not going their way. Granted, none have been given less than the 13 games Potter has had in the job. His record of seven wins, three defeats and three draws does not even read particularly like a crisis. But when Chelsea are a side that expects to challenge on four fronts each season, the reality of their situation becomes more galling.
Out of the EFL Cup already, they sit seventh in the Premier League. This state of affairs cannot be solely attributed to Potter. Tuchel’s poor start to the campaign is still being keenly felt at Stamford Bridge. But the end of the German’s tenure hints that Abramovich’s trigger-happy streak may live on at Chelsea through its new owners.
Todd Boehly is the frontman for the current regime, having taken over the club in concert with Clearlake Capital. Having dispensed with Marina Granovskaia, the club director who drove Chelsea’s transfer business, Boehly took on the role himself for the summer transfer window. This is where the disconnect began to form with Tuchel.
One widely reported instance of friction between manager and co-owner was the subject of Cristiano Ronaldo. It is well-publicised that the Manchester United striker wanted out of Old Trafford this past summer. Boehly sat down for lunch with Jorge Mendes to discuss a potential deal. The American was keen to bring Ronaldo to the club as a high-profile replacement for the outgoing Romelu Lukaku. His then-head coach was less enamoured with the idea.
Tuchel’s system favours adaptable, versatile forwards. Having laboured for a year with the one-note Lukaku, the German wasn’t keen on the similarly-limited Ronaldo leading his line. Boehly was said to be irritated by his manager turning his nose up at the commercial boon Ronaldo would provide, and the seeds were sown which bore rotten fruit a few weeks later. By September, Tuchel was sacked.
While the quickfire sacking of Tuchel felt very Abramovich, the choice of Potter as his replacement had a more holistic quality. Here is a man who lacked experience dealing with Chelsea’s galaxy-sized egos, but who had proven adept at implementing an attractive, effective brand of football. The former Brighton boss is a manager who moulds rather than harangues his players. Coaxing improvement rather than bemoaning failure is his modus operandi. It felt like a paradigm shift at a club where Jose Mourinho once ruled with an iron fist full of withering insults.
That brave new era now faces its toughest test. In terms of games you’d want ahead of the six-week for the World Cup, a visit to in-form Newcastle United wouldn’t be your first choice. The Magpies haven’t lost a game since a defeat to Liverpool in August. A defeat would send Potter into a precarious period without a game to turn around perceptions. It will also provide the first real test of Boehly and Clearlake’s patience. Stick with their man and give him the time needed to turn it around or revert to type and pull an Abramovich?
Logically, it is far too early in Potter’s tenure to judge his work. This is a team in flux that can’t get out of its own way in terms of recruitment. January and summer both need to be more balanced than recent transfer windows have been. Rather than star-gazing, Chelsea need to look at signing the sort of players that will allow Potter to implement his style fully. Only then will it be appropriate to judge. The Roman empire is over at Stamford Bridge. Time to erase the mistakes of the Abramovich regime.
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