Tactics and Transfers: Chelsea philosophy change can create wins and profit
That said though there are a couple of witty and sharp transfers that I will suggest later.
More importantly, however, it would provide two other benefits to not having any transfers this summer besides Nkunku.
They are:
- Re-stabilize our negotiating position. Teams at the moment are not scared we’ll say no and so don’t take our negotiations seriously. Too often teams see Chelsea as the opportunity to turn a profit for the year. That stops immediately.
- Help create cohesion under Pochettino and under his guidance so further moves can assimilate more quickly in the future.
If you were watching Chelsea this season you know that rather than playing like a football side they played like 11 individual people who had never played together before.
There are more than enough good players in the side right now to create a competitive and dangerous football side BUT they need to be a football side and not a blue lycra-wearing aerobic class.
The hard part for Chris Jurasek, Todd Boehly, and Beghdad Eghbali will be in their managerial acumen when communicating with Pochettino on this.
Managers like all people in business need to feel supported. Finding a way to get Pochettino to buy into a year of testing out and trying his squad and finding his feet and methodology with the team BEFORE dumping money into the team will be important.
If they can manage to get even Pochettino himself to fully buy into that then Chelsea will be in about the best place humanly possible in 2024. That though would be an incredible feat of personnel management from the Chelsea higher-ups to get Pochettino firmly into that space and even more so to do it so well that he’s able to get the squad to understand the importance of the year in proving themselves to him.
If that’s impossible it’s better to lean on the side of supporting the manager and bringing in a couple of lieutenants for him to lean on as he builds the squad’s philosophy from where it is until now. For a good example of that look at how Chelsea purchased three members of Jose Mourinho’s FC Porto side when hiring him.