Chelsea Tactics and Transfers: Rebuilding from this crime against football

Chelsea lost 6-0 to Manchester City. The match was more embarrassing than the scoreline because of how entirely predictable and unsurprising it was.

Chelsea deserved to lose. They deserved to fall out of the top four. They deserved to fall out of the top five. They deserved the thorough thrashing that they received from a real team like Manchester City. Every single piece of trash, shame and abuse hurled their way should be thought of as an appropriate chastisement. In all my time as a Chelsea supporter, and it has now been for the better period of my life, I have never been so repulsed by a group of men.

We should be clear here, dear readers: I do not absolve Maurizio Sarri from blame. His anti-pragmatic approach to seemingly everything – be it match-day suits, weight room training or tactics – is bordering on the absurd.

That said, if Chelsea can’t acknowledge that this group of players would be better off lining the bottom of a trash bin than on the pitch of a proud Premier League side, they have their heads so deeply stuck in the ground that even one of Elon Musk’s new boring machines will be unable to rescue them.

For instance, Sarri was entirely right – more so than anything else – about this side lacking spirit. He was also right that they need a connection to the academy. Academies are where team spirit is born at literally every good club in the world.

What, then, is he doing ignoring youth players and never playing them? It’s almost as if he seeks to drive a rusty icepick straight through the very heart of reason and reliability despite their both already being weary from his ridiculous prior deliberations. Every step further in this direction is cruel and bordering on insanity.

It simply cannot go on. At this point, just for the sake of variety, Chelsea should try not firing the manager. It doesn’t work. It’s not as if Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte (two of the best managers of all time) simply forgot how to coach. I suspect neither did Sarri. In the name of drama, shall we perhaps try letting go a few of the players who insist on embarrassing the club and our supporters?

Chelsea should decimate the loan army. They have a hundred million pounds of talent that could be used actually fixing the squad simply wasting away on loan in all corners of Europe. The club could then use the loan system for what it’s meant: teaching first-team adult level football to youth players. Wouldn’t Hudson-Odoi be more likely to accept a two-year loan to someplace in Europe if he hadn’t seen that system so obviously fail and harm the careers of over (conservatively guessing here) 30 players? Yes, he would.

The overhaul should begin with wholesale changes in sales from the loan army and the current squad. Eden Hazard has said he’s made a decision and, on this showing, it’s obvious it should be Real Madrid. So we’ll start there. Chelsea should sell Eden Hazard, Davide Zappacosta, Danny Drinkwater, Tomas Kalas, Michael Hector, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Abdul Baba Rahman, Mario Pasalic, Victor Moses, Alvaro Morata, Michy Batshuayi and Kenedy.

Chelsea could bring in around £225-250 million from selling those players. Then they could simply release David Luiz and allow Gary Cahill and Olivier Giroud the options to stay. It should be made clear to both players that their leadership is valued, though they will play very little. A respect for experience, age and intelligence is something Chelsea could add to the squad , by the way.

Contracting the loan army helps Chelsea make enough money to afford changes to the squad while also allowing the club to rebuild the very sincerity of the system itself. That is Chelsea’s biggest issue: a lack of sincerity from the top to bottom. Football is about passion, it’s about supporters, it’s about history and family. What this Chelsea team has been reduced to is eleven boys stuck in the bodies of men collecting money without a single shred of character or spine.

The current cycle of player management kills all motivation to play for the club in the first place. Motivation, as Sarri again so astutely pointed out, is the main problem at the club. Players only come to Chelsea for the money and the spot on the totem pole of world football that the club currently holds but is losing quickly.

They don’t come for the never say die spirit. They don’t come for the joy that is living in West London or the locker room that was once famously fast friends.

Chelsea are a paycheck and nothing more. It’s why the supporters have become so negative, too. They deserve to be. Enough of this bollocks of criticizing the support for being unhappy with something they should very well be unhappy about. The supporters have been treated as dollar signs and not one of the most historically loyal groups of supporters in the world. Before Roman Abramovich they maintained a joy and fortitude beyond what the level of play on the field deserved. They created a community that was a joy to be a part of.

Now they are destroyed. The club is on fire and falling into a state of such disarray that it doesn’t resemble anything like a football club anymore.

That is why Chelsea should allow a proper rebuild to happen. Let Sarri stay. Just one time let’s have a manager and give him a chance.

Chelsea should let the core be built of players from the academy. Play Ethan Ampadu in partnership with Andreas Christensen. Let them develop a relationship. A defensive pairing should be three men: the two players and the connection between them. It should not be whatever ridiculousness David Luiz and Antonio Rudiger have that makes them both look even worse than they are.

Then let Reece James deputize for Azpilicueta before assuming the mantle in a year or so. It’s not hard to get a youth player 20-25 appearances a season. Marcus Rashford just passed 100 appearances, for God’s sake, and he played under Jose Mourinho!

Chelsea should play Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi.  Bring back Tammy Abraham and let him learn how Maurizio Sarri wants him to play. If Sarri can do one thing it’s coach a striker. Why not let it be a young, athletic, naturally well-positioned homegrown one who is mentored by Higuain for another year?

Let one-third of the squad be youth and homegrown players who can help new signings integrate into England and London the way that Chelsea players never used to have a problem doing? That would go a long way towards building that club spirit.

With the money leftover, add just one or two quality players. Enough with this scattershot approach to purchasing. It doesn’t do anything except kill squad spirit and waste money. If they can’t find any real targets then just put the money in the bank and let it grow.

That squad wouldn’t be the best next year. It would likely finish sixth, and then a year later fifth, and then a year later maybe even third.

And then you know what would happen, to a squad with a tangible spirit, a safe place to learn and confident place to play football? It would prosper the way Manchester United did under Sir Alex Ferguson early on. It would for a long time win titles and play the sort of football they had actually been given time to learn.

Chelsea could use the money from those sales to cover the financial cost of not playing European football for those first years. Even without the European football Chelsea supporters would be happier with the squad than the one we are seeing today. You know, the one that is supposedly better than Arsenal and Spurs even though they are below them in the table.

Chelsea simply cannot go on as they are. The sad part is they likely won’t learn a thing from this and, with all my written rage, I can’t explain a way around it. It’s a ridiculous club that seems to have created all its own issues and deserves all of it’s punishment. That’s the worst part.

They’re guilty of crimes against football and are being punished for it. It’s hard to watch, but they are all damned and deserve to be.

Sack the players. Save the club.