“Are there any other football clubs we can walk to?” – I asked my father as I walked dejected out of the stadium.
A wonderful day walking through West Brompton Cemetary and sitting in the West Stand was ruined by James Beattie and Southampton. That is similar to how I felt watching Chelsea on Saturday.
The moment Cesar Azpilicueta was injured was a metaphor for exactly what saddens me about the blues right now.
This should also serve as an important reminder that though the football was truly horrid and irredeemable on Saturday, its importance pales compared to the health of our captain Cesar Azpilicueta. I and I am sure all of you wish him a happy and quick recovery as soon as possible.
That man is laying in the hospital and many of you have suggested previously that Chelsea should let him leave rather than allow him the right to retire on his own terms. Shame on you.
If Cesar Azpilicueta wants to stay at Chelsea he can stay at Chelsea and seeing it any other way simply suggests you lack not only eyes but a heart and mind as well. In the words of Jose Mourinho “if I had 11 Azpilicuata’s I would win the Champions League”.
Right now Chelsea have one and he sacrificed himself for the rest of this loathsome and pathetic group of phonies and he did that for us. He did that for Chelsea and Chelsea supporters. When he’s done playing he should immediately join the coaching staff or even better be club President and represent us to the rest of the footballing world.
That is why Saturday’s blithering idiocy was so truly awful.
The one long-term Blue sacrificed his well-being for the side the way so many supporters feel they would do the same if they were of the level to play for the club. Meanwhile, the rest of the side who only recently have even met one another did nothing to defend the badge.
That’s really all there is to say about it but the answer it should be clear is not to fire Graham Potter.
The English manager hasn’t even had a pre-season with the team and came in during the middle of one of the most peculiar seasons in football history. The queen’s death made a break in play which was followed by the first (and hopefully last) winter world cup in history and that was followed by one of the most extreme transfer windows if not the most extreme one in the history of the game.
These don’t excuse the results.
They have been truly and completely terrible. Everyone at the club: the board, recruitment department, medical staff, players, and coaches should take a long hard look in the mirror and decide whether or not this is the sort of thing they expect from themselves.
Maybe Chelsea football club isn’t the right place for them.
Not to be entirely rude but the lives of players and staff members of Leeds, Bournemouth, Derby, and Burnley are all very different if you catch my drift. We have players holding out for 300k per week salaries in the midst of a season in which they look like they’ve never played football before.
We have players sitting in hotel rooms in other countries just days before a game to try and force a move into happening rather than politely and professionally preparing to compete for the team which is in that very moment paying them.
I’m sure they all like having the quality of wives and girlfriends who say “he plays for Chelsea”. I’m sure they have children who enjoy that feeling. Their parents feel the same I bet. The cars, jewelry, penthouse apartments, nightclub openings, cool international advertisements, and fashion show invitations are probably of great appeal too. They likely enjoy living in West London or Surrey and the fine leafy and luxurious lives that they live in accordance with the Chelsea way.
So they must think long and hard about whether or not they believe that they themselves are earning that standard of life at the moment.
That though is why Chelsea cannot fire Graham Potter in this instance.
They need to break this fever once and for all before building again in the preseason.
For too many years Chelsea have gone from coach to manager and then back again all the while leaving the players blameless. The players knew that no matter how poorly they played they’d really only need to shoulder a few cold glances from a struggling manager before they’d be off and they could see if the new one appreciated their loathesome and sycophantic behavior any more than the last one.
Has Graham Potter made mistakes? Sure. Of course, he has.
This weird desire to consistently switch out nearly his entire 11 so that no player can either gain match fitness or have the benefit of momentum stinks of a lack of confidence. At least he’s smart enough to lack confidence at the moment. It would be daft to be confident when coaching a side as meek and awful as Chelsea have been this past seemingly endless time.
But every manager makes mistakes and guess what so does every player.
The simple truth is that this is a bad moment. Going from Tuchel to Potter to Insert-Name-Here makes Chelsea look just as stupid as people want us to look. We must be stronger than that.
What is Potter to do? Players who have never played together usually look like a bunch of men who have never played together and Chelsea brought in another football clubs worth of transfers less than a month ago!
Sir Alex specifically said that to maintain cohesion a side shouldn’t have more than five or six incomings and outgoings TOTAL Chelsea are surely in the twenties now.
This is still a group of children on their first month of school. I doubt any of them even know where all the other ones grew up yet. They know “we bought him from Ukraine” but they’ve never said “where is Krasnohrad?”. They don’t know each other well enough to play good football yet.
That is specifically why you don’t usually buy in January. It takes MONTHS not days to get a football side together playing cohesively. When could Potter possibly have done that? With the original group of players when they were away on FIFA-mandated leave?
Then?
Yes, a very patient and profoundly intelligent opinion it seems that one is.
Perhaps he would have done it with the new group of players between now and two weeks ago when they arrived?
The only way this gets worse is if we fire Potter and start the whole process over again. We simply don’t know what his team will look like and sinking a panicky and stupid guillotine into his neck at this time would reek of a lack of accountability and just general knowledge and you know who would sniff that out? The players.
Then Chelsea would have 600 million pounds worth of transfers who would never ever hit their potential because of a whole new wave of player power.
Potter will hold them accountable if he is able to and the way that he will be able to do that is for the club to let him do it. Someone does need to have a strong word with him to get him to be himself again. To get him to start coaching as Graham Potter would and not as Graham Potter believes Graham Potter’s Chelsea self would.
In the summer if it has truly gone to pot and a revolt has happened things can be measured of course and Boehly and Eghbali are smart men and won’t rush to an immature decision. They have appointed knowledgeable football people and everyone knows that the solution in this period isn’t going to be firing the manager.
If anything sticking with him through this period will show the players that this man is here for the long haul so they’d better listen to him. It would be hard to find another manager A, who believed the same long-term project line when Chelsea had now fired both Potter and Tuchel in the same season, and B, who is simply good enough to manage this team.
This period hurts. It’s frustrating and annoying and I’m not going to sit here and tell you not to care. I might suggest you look and see which players care the same way you do though?
Then perhaps see if you blame them or the manager more.
What makes more sense to you?
You’ll be disappointed. Hopefully not as much as I am. I’d never wish that on you or anyone.
*kicks rock*
*stares out window with shame and despair*
Let Potter do his job and break this loathsome player power fever that is and has been the ruin of our club once and for all. That is the big picture and must remain priority number one if we’re ever to topple the real giants of the game.
Then let’s come back and destroy football the way only we can. Get better Cesar you’re more of a legend than anyone who ever thought you should leave could ever be.