Chelsea fans are mistaken if they think they are the audience for “Media Watch”

Chelsea’s in-house content team are trying to deflect attention from the turmoil in the locker room and poor results on the pitch with their much-derided, deservedly-mocked Media Watch segment. However, the real audience for these vacuities are the players, not the fans.

Even the most self-debasing echo chambers of Chelsea fan bloggers and desperately clinging in-the-know’s can hardly compete with the club’s official site for sheer boot-licking prowess. Their unique blend of Baghdad Bob and Gary Walsh have given fans the Bluest read on games, transfers, goings-on and behind-the-scenes activities for years. But with the new “Media Watch” segment, the club site is pivoting to a new audience: the players.

How else to explain the soft rehashing of the gentlest major media coverage. Outsourcing content creation? Possible, especially given the financial hit of another year in the Europa League. But a scroll through today’s Media Watch leaves the strong impression that this is what the club needs the players to hear more than the rest of us.

“According to The Telegraph,” the first segment begins – see, we’re not saying this! The Telegraph is! – Olivier Giroud is urging “team unity,” for the boys to “stick together and think collectively with togetherness.” Later, just in case you were unclear, he says “we stick altogether.” The club can’t take any chances that the players won’t read Giroud’s comments in The Telegraph. On the flip side, they probably don’t want the players reading everything else in the Football section of the paper. Nor do they want whatever was said in Cobham – either loudly for the group or in whispers on the way to the canteen – to be the final word.

So, really lads, shy of getting Olivier Giroud to sing “Blue is the Colour” there’s not much more the club can do to get you to listen to this handsome voice of experience. Please, for the love of god, stay together. With unity. And togetherness.

Did someone use the word “stay?” The club would like to show its appreciation to Andreas Christensen for saying all the right things about why he decided to stay at Chelsea for the second half of the season. He said what they wanted to hear, so they are more than happier to say what he said when he said what they wanted to hear, to show everybody in locker room currently texting their agent how smoothly glad tidings can flow both ways. The ol’ west London two-step.

The only thing that could make the club happier than Christensen talking about how he feels “needed,” “still love[s] playing here” and has “come to terms with the situation” would be for Callum Hudson-Odoi to read it and say “When I grow up, I want to be just like Andreas.”

But if a young Blue is going to grow up like anyone, it should be Frank Lampard. He’s coming home, you know. Maybe not soon, but the man who needs no charm offensive to keep up his love for Chelsea FC is getting one just the same.

Players – perhaps English defenders – who may feel like they are completely neglected despite having won all the same trophies as players like Lampard and Ashley Cole will be heartened to know that the club still has a place for them. No matter what may happen in a player’s day-to-day at the club or even over the course of the season, there will always be a place at the bottom of Media Watch to quote and link to Sky Sports’ reporting on what you said a few years after you left.

Maybe Gary Cahill is the key to understanding “Media Watch.” We learned last week from The Telegraph’s Matt Law that Maurizio Sarri “has not attempted to talk to Cahill about whether or not he intends to use him or what, if any, role he will play until the end of the season.”

Since Sarri will not tell the players where they stand, and few things are more painful for a player to learn his future from a third party or, worse, the media, the club are laundering the media to compensate for Sarri’s impoverished communication and man-management skills. They are not going to hear motivation, explanations or intentions from the coach. Better to hear such things through Baghdad Bob’s Blue Blog then from the original source. Who knows what else they might see if they spend time on Telegraph or SkySports?

We just ask they put this on the team’s private intranet or otherwise out of the public eye. Chelsea have enough to be embarrassed about historically for their owned content and recently in all manners of club operations. Why make it more painful for us and easier for the club’s detractors?