Chelsea Tactics and Transfers: Time for a long-overdue house cleaning

With the season finally over it may be time for Chelsea to take the first honest look at themselves in a long, long time.

Chelsea finished in fifth place, won the FA Cup, have an owner with visa issues and a team rife with more than that. For many years Chelsea were able to paper over the cracks that appeared around the club. However, having missed out on the Champions League for the second time in three years, this is their moment to consider an honest and appropriate approach to changing things at Stamford Bridge.

We’ve talked about how player power is an issue in football. At Chelsea, it is worse than anywhere else. The players’ lack of discipline, dedication, and sacrifice have held the club back time and time again. For too long, Chelsea have targeted the right physical specimens and abhorrent mental ones. That Chelsea had players who, following the FA Cup win – a moment of joy, surely – could not wait to act immaturely on Instagram and social media is absurd.

The players are too comfortable when they shouldn’t be. They have not had a good season. What business do they have acting as if they have?

It broke my heart to hear Willian had done something so childish as covering his manager’s body in emojis to take him out of the picture of the team celebrating their FA Cup win. This sort of thing is exactly the problem.

Now I know there will be those of you who say it’s only social media. No, he didn’t get arrested. No, he didn’t take drugs. No, he didn’t do anything criminal. Sure, that’s all true. But this attitude is metastasizing amongst the current Chelsea playing staff, and it needs to be cut out like the cancer it is.

If Willian can’t see further than the tip of his own nose that his TEAM had just succeeded in capturing a major trophy because he was too upset about a lack of playing time, he needs to look at himself in the mirror and decide what sort of man he wants to be.  He is 29, so he’s young in terms of the length of his life. But with this attitude, he will not be well served in his later years.

Could he not recognize his team had won, even if he disagreed with a decision? So surely his manager was not that wrong. The team won the match, and Willian can’t pull his attitude out of his own gutter? Pathetic.

Chelsea need to be rid of this sort of thing. I’m a fan of Willian’s – at least I had been. Now he needs to leave. He and David Luiz, who did a similar thing, need to leave the club.  They are both in the 30-year-old range and acting like 12-year old girls whose crushes decided not to attend their birthday party.  It’s pathetic, laughable and for embarrassing.

It all comes back to the same problem. The players do not feel they need to respect the manager because he will be fired. That’s why they are able to tank seasons like this. Chelsea should have finished third on squad strength. Manchester City and United both have better sides, but do Tottenham and Liverpool?  No. Chelsea’s players took their bi-annual nosedive and should be embarrassed and flogged for it. Alas, they won’t be. We all tragicomically know that.

Chelsea would be better off selling Luiz, Willian and any other player who can’t recognize that the badge on the front of the shirt has stood as a symbol of West London and its pride for over 100 years, and is more important than their pedantic sycophantry.

What a useless group of athletic garbage.  Is it not enough to make over £100,000 a week to essentially exercise?  You must also accompany that sickening entitlement with an attitude that would be looked down upon in grammar school?

Chelsea needs to lose upwards of 4-6 players this season. That includes the oft-misunderstood and as equally over-rated goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois. While he had a decent FA Cup final and on his day is as good a goalkeeper as any tree with lead feet, his attitude and contract situation are a blight for all to see.

Proper football clubs do not allow contracts of players as important as the starting goalkeeper to run into this level of disregard. Chelsea cannot build when the goalkeeper is refusing to sign a new contract. He has disrespected the club enough publicly already. But combine that with Chelsea’s blind-as-a-bat handling of his contract, and the club is that much weaker.

Chelsea must buy a proper first-choice goalkeeper and sit Courtois. Yes, I am suggesting they make an example out of him. Maybe even make one the others will learn to follow.

Sit and sell him. End of story. Chelsea sadly won’t get enough money for him as is, but they’ve mucked that up by allowing his contract to be a complete joke. Chelsea have handled this issue before with Florent Malouda. It’s not as if they don’t know how.

Chelsea have spent too long with this ridiculous wannabe-Barcelona attitude.  In doing so, they signed players who were neither good enough to play at Barcelona nor wanted to play for Chelsea. They  created a club with no desire, no talent (at least a minor amount), and a sickening lack of character.

Chelsea should bring back youth players with a chip on their shoulder, sell the rotten mold they have now and keep it simple next season. Power football and the Champions League. That’s it. Get into the Champions League and save the money they would have spent this summer and then go double in two years, up to £300-400 million.

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This squad, minus the leaches and with some players like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Kurt Zouma and Tammy Abraham back in it. Add in a hopefully healthy Alvaro Morata with a year of English football under his belt, Olivier Giroud and the finally emerging Tiemoue Bakayoko. That is enough for fourth place next season. There’s no point overpaying for players who aren’t good enough for Champions League clubs at this point.  It’s a stupid and shortsighted move to make.

Actually, having just written that, I know what Chelsea will do. Damn.

It’s sad seeing what has become of this club. There’s not even success to lean on and there certainly isn’t any youthful vigor, character or charm either.  What a flaming pile of feces (since they don’t let me swear).

There’s a smart, succinct and good way to solve these issues, but they are too obvious and so the club will studiously avoid them. Chelsea should keep Antonio Conte, a good manager whose style was good enough last year before being the second consecutive genius to be Judas’d by his playing staff. They should excommunicate the players who would collect fortunes to play a child’s game and show no graciousness for it.

Chelsea won’t do any of that. The cracks will continue to expand into the caverns they are today.

Next: Chelsea's locker room is an absolute disaster right now

I’d fix it, but Chelsea have turned down my repeated technical director applications to this point.