The trudge up Fulham Road has rarely been this despondent. It is a mild Spring night, a bit too chilly for the end of April, and gloom is the only real temperature that has been felt around these parts since the summer.
A lone figure, wearing a blue Chelsea bobble hat holds a raggedy homemade sign. Scribbled on the paper are two words “Sack Eghbali” referencing Behdad Eghbali, one of the club's co-owners. His appearance from a distance, aided by dark glasses looks eerily like Todd Boehly.
This week will mark a year since Boehly first stepped foot inside Stamford Bridge, present for a game against Wolves as the American hero leading a consortium to save Chelsea from impending doom. Back then, there was intrigue and excitement. Sadness at an era ending but hope a new dawn could spark new inspiration.
The jump forward to today reflects a club baffled by its increasing failures on and off the pitch. Even by Chelsea standards, this season has broken new grounds for chaos. Three head coaches, £600million worth of new signings, a flurry of new appointments, All-Star suggestions, humiliating defeats and the return of a club legend to bring even more disillusionment, not unity.
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The nature of Tuesday night's humbling at Arsenal was not a shock, the only surprise coming from the goal Chelsea scored through Noni Madueke.
It is hard to know where to begin with a failure of this magnitude. The gallows humour had amongst supporters that nervily peaked down to depths of the Premier League table in April they never thought possible. Last Thursday evening, the fate of Everton’s fight against relegation was more relevant to Chelsea than a top-four clash between Spurs and Manchester United. Whilst it appears unlikely that Chelsea will be relegated, the sheer concept of it says enough.
Even the infamous 2015/16 campaign looks mild in comparison to this one. For all that season has been bemoaned in the eight years since it still boasted good days for fans. A league double over Arsenal, some stunning Willian free-kicks, and the infamous scuppering of Spurs' title ambitions in dramatic fashion.
That freakish year was sandwiched in between two brilliant title-winning hauls. The players involved in that disappointment are mostly of a higher quality than any in the current group - Thibaut Courtois, Gary Cahill, John Terry, Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas, Willian, Pedro, Diego Costa and Eden Hazard. Even 33-year-old Diego Costa looks more energetic than a Chelsea attack so lacking any sight of value.
This group, for all its supposed potential, cannot lean on recent glories and shows little sign of being capable of reproducing any fleeting joy to supporters before this season has come to its much-needed end.
All the clubs below the Blues scored more league goals in April, a small sample size yes, but an equal reflection of how pathetically abject a club boasting the likes of Kai Havertz, Joao Felix, Raheem Sterling, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been throughout a season of consistent disappointment.
There is little shock that Chelsea went on to lose the recent midweek clash with Brentford 2-0, at least there should not be. Even if there are boos apparent, this feeling is nothing new. Chelsea fans have only come away from the Bridge happy nine times since August, if you take away the Champions League it falls to six, the last coming at the beginning of March in an unconvincing 1-0 win over Leeds.
Many will cite the early sacking of Thomas Tuchel as the major contributing factor to the subsequent collapse. But this conveniently forgets the dismal performances witnessed before that dismissal in September. The sluggish win over Everton, the battering by Leeds, the lack of fight at Southampton and the painfully vapid display at Zagreb.
Tuchel cannot be blameless this season even if the points gained against Everton, Spurs, Leicester and West Ham look priceless right now. There has been a foreboding nature to this season that was reflected in of all places, a pre-season clash in Orlando where Chelsea were alarmingly swept aside by Arsenal.
If you needed a preview of how the season was about to play out for both London clubs, that was it.
No matter where you stand with blame for Tuchel, Graham Potter or now Frank Lampard, you are effectively ranking different levels of failure. In that aspect, Lampard looks set to win that battle given the humiliating record of six consecutive defeats since he took charge. Many could not envisage a level lower than the disappointment under Potter, but Lampard has managed to achieve it.
All roads in this season lead back to the maligned ownership who since the early weeks of the summer transfer window were questioned in their competency as outsiders. The self-appointment of Boehly, an individual with no prior experience in European football, as interim sporting director during a challenging summer of change.
The signings of Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella and Aubameyang all have failed to inspire much uptick, with only the later arrival of Wesley Fofana offering hope, unfortunately, hampered by a knee injury that kept the Frenchman out between October and January.
After a summer spend left a team that looked muddled and rudderless heading into the World Cup break, the decision was made for further action in January, this time changing tack into the investment on younger talents. The logic being in focusing on talents that can form the spine of a future squad.
Benoit Badiashile, David Datro Fofana, Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke and Enzo Fernandez for a staggering £100million-plus deadline day fee raised further eyebrows. In the middle of that an opportunistic loan signing for outcasted talent Joao Felix, who was perceived as being misunderstood by a defensively minded Diego Simeone.
Whilst the overall strategy in profiles made more sense, the new issue that quickly arose was a bloated squad. So much so, that Thiago Silva recently described it as requiring more space around Cobham for players to change before training.
“The manager can only pick 11 from a squad of 30-something — that’s tough." Silva said. "Some can’t make the squad. We signed eight in January. We need to stop and put a strategy in place otherwise next season we could make the same mistakes.”
Already fringe figures were pushed further into isolation. The failure in sealing a loan for Hakim Ziyech to PSG created further issues for an already scrutinised Graham Potter who was struggling to uncover the right answers. With a coach already adapting to the struggles of a new environment with harsher scrutiny and inherited problems.
It is hard to imagine many coaches surviving within this spiral of change even if Potter did not aid his case by certain team selections. If Potter was not equipped for the role, it is hard to feel that any coach is helped by a first-team squad of over 30 players, including highly paid older characters who demand minutes, hyped youngsters who have recently moved for big money, academy talents aiming to break through, or more established talents with question marks over their futures.
Boehly, Eghbali and the recently acquired sporting directors simply must trim the fat if they aim to rebuild the trust of an already annoyed set of supporters, some who already doubt they can rectify this growing mess. Accusations of setting fire to a culture that was short-termism and not perfect, but provided trophies and in recent years, consistent Champions League qualification.
This season cannot rid the recent frustrations. The need for Chelsea to modernise their approach to recruitment and clarity over squad building. That would be revisionism. It feels like a flurry of frustrations felt since 2017 have been cranked up to an 11 this season. The failure to find a prolific goalscorer dropping to catastrophic lows and the inability to profile the correct signings came at a more expensive cost. The constant chopping and changing of head coaches is even more farcical.
The lesson to take from 2022/23 should not be that Chelsea should abandon any form of clarity behind the scenes. That the Abramovich model is worth reinstalling when it was showing cracks before. It is that the new hierarchy needs to prove capable of clarifying its new one.
The potential appointment of Mauricio Pochettino feels like the first potential step back in a sane direction. A coach with a good pedigree, a track record of improving young players, a fiery attitude and experience within a madhouse club like PSG. If you want to get a degree in Chelseanomics, the Parc des Princes is probably your best place of education.
But Pochettino cannot be the sole firefighter here. He needs help from above, namely the trimming down of a playing squad that could fill both dressing rooms at Stamford Bridge. The disillusioned characters need to be parted from, the failed experiments too.
There will need to be humility in the face of the pressing countdown to the FFP deadline of June 30. That may mean more loans akin to the ones negotiated for Timeoue Bakayoko and Danny Drinkwater, the ghosts of the 2017 window. But if that means Pochettino walks into a vital pre-season with a reasonably sized squad given this is a coach who prefers to work with a smaller group, then the public grilling is worth it.
They have got Chelsea into this mess, so they need to be the ones to resolve it, rather than allow another coach to be the one to pay for their errors.
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