Chelsea’s transfer ban will have little impact on their ability to attract or retain a top manager. Almost by definition, top managers are those least bothered by such things.
Chelsea’s transfer ban is quite appropriate for their offences. The two-window ban, which will be delayed until after the summer pending appeal, is an attenuated, symbolic check-in-the-box, as befits Chelsea improperly engaging youth players they never played or had any intention of playing, save Bertrand Traore and his 513 Blue minutes. If anyone benefitted from Chelsea’s illicit dealing, it wasn’t Chelsea. And now if anyone suffers this punishment, it won’t be Chelsea, unless by their own doing.
Chelsea must prepare themselves for their year in which they are forced to pantomime Tottenham’s transfer policy. Their key to surviving the ban is not stocking up on players this summer, but ensuring they have a manager not dependent on one window after another.
The key point of distinction between Maurizio Sarri on the one hand and Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp on the other is how the latter two adapted to what they had to earn what the wanted.
Every manager in the world would do better the right players, especially if “the right players” are among the best in the world. Other than Guardiola at Manchester City, few managers ever get all the right players. But the story of Guardiola hinges on his first season at City, when he had a suboptimal mid-nine-figure squad. He made numerous adjustments to his players and to the Premier League because he had a philosophy that was upstream of the system, and because he knew that doing the best with what he had was a necessary bona fide for getting the players he wanted. Much the same process played out at Liverpool with Klopp.
Maurizio Sarri has been as maladroit in managing up his chain of command as he is the players beneath him.
Even if the Blues go on a spending spree this summer before the ban takes effect and buy all the players on their coach’s wishlist, it could still not be enough absent some creativity in their usage. Too much can happen in a Premier League season, let alone four competitions, for one batch of players to only do one thing at all times. This is among the many lessons Chelsea need to learn from their year of living Sarr-ofully.
Antonio Conte won 13 Premier League games in a row using the 3-4-3. Once Tottenham showed the way to break it down, other clubs followed suit and Conte had to go to his backup plans. Jose Mourinho is likewise often found out, as much by his dressing room as his opponents. His inability or unwillingness to change his motivational techniques lies behind most of his recent declines and falls. Obviously, the Premier League figured out Maurizio Sarri rather quickly, and no infusion of “his” players will make much of a difference.
If Chelsea buy all the best players necessary for a system like Sarri’s to be at its 100% ideal best, it would still not be enough. Sooner or later – certainly before the passage of two transfer windows – injuries and opponents will take their toll on it. It will not be as fresh, and therefore not as effective, in the final few weeks or months as it was in the first few weeks.
If Sarri had a 14 blank checks to buy precisely the squad he wanted, they would still only ever do one thing. An idealist manager – as opposed to an ideological manager – would use those 14 blank checks to build a squad who could do anything he asked of them, because the Premier League and Champions League will demand just about everything.
The Blues need a manager who can do many things with the players he has in front of him. Different squads, different shapes and structures, different tactics, different motivations – same 25 players. A manager like that will pull the squad through at least two transfer windows. They likely could survive 1-2 more empty windows if the club do, in fact, pre-load the team for him before the ban.
Diego Simeone and Zinedine Zidane both came through transfer bans with little impact on their overall performance and ambitions. Both had strong clubs going into the ban, both convinced key players to stay despite the ban and both made the necessary adjustments throughout the ban to not let it interfere with their performance. They knew they were not getting any players, so they worked with the players they had.
A transfer ban is no place for an ideologue. A coach always dependent on having all the strictly-defined “right players” at all times sets his club up for failure on a good day, and is debilitating during a transfer ban.
A well-run club, the kind that does not go 472 days without a technical director, should be able to withstand a two-window transfer ban that takes immediate effect. A club like Chelsea is more than capable of withstanding a two-window ban that starts after the next window, provided they have a coach who can get through two windows without reinforcement.
If that’s not defining down the basic duties of a coach, we’re already too far gone.