Doing things differently was not a New Year’s resolution for the Chelsea hierarchy.
They may have a new head coach in Liam Rosenior, but otherwise it’s very much as you were. The BlueCo project ploughs on undiverted.
Enzo Maresca’s departure on New Year’s Day came after his relationship with his bosses soured.
It came just 20 days after he’d been named Premier League manager of month for November, but “head coach of the month” might have been more appropriate, given the dilution of the head coach’s role explained the power struggle that spelt the end of his reign.
The BlueCo consortium own Strasbourg as well as Chelsea and have appointed Rosenior, the French club’s English head coach, as Maresca’s replacement.
Articulate but unproven, it’s a big step up for the 41-year-old, whose first Chelsea match comes on Saturday against Charlton in the FA Cup after watching the 2-1 defeat away to Fulham from the stands on Wednesday.
Maresca improved Chelsea, the Conference League and Club World Cup both won during his 18-month tenure and the first silverware of the BlueCo era.
But fans are not all supportive of the owners. Many fear riding the wave of Champions League revenue to be the limit of their ambition.
After almost £1.5 billion of transfer spending since 2022, are Chelsea any closer to adding a third European crown, or winning the Premier League again?
A “very good” turnout is expected at a fan protest before the Brentford game on January 17.
Has Rosenior walked into the job too early to succeed? He needs fans onside early.
Method to the madness
Chelsea have the fifth-youngest squad in Europe’s major leagues, Strasbourg the youngest, and this is all part of the plan of BlueCo’s recruitment strategy.
Top clubs today battle for players at ever-younger age groups, and Chelsea have been at the forefront of this.
Some Chelsea signings are kids plucked from far afield before their value soars, such as Kazakhstan’s Dastan Satpayev, 17, who joins in August, or Ecuador’s Deinner Ordóñez, 16, joining in January 2028.
Others, such as £222m duo Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández (aged 21 and 22 when they joined), are more established investments who cost considerably more.
While cynics argue the model is little more than a player-trading scheme driven by profit, the hierarchy would point out that an era of greater financial regulation requires long-term thinking.
Longer contracts mean Chelsea’s wage bill is lower when portioned on balance sheets per year, plus younger signings - the right ones at least - hold their market value for longer. There’s method to the madness.
Many Chelsea players and staff used to work at Brighton or Manchester City; it is no surprise aspects of both clubs’ models are now found at Stamford Bridge.
But do Chelsea share their solid foundations? Pep Guardiola is the world’s best manager and has outlasted seven permanent Chelsea head coaches in his time at City, while Brighton’s “buy low, sell high” model is not so repeatable at a club of Chelsea’s size.
Everyone knows you have money, so they demand it - and who are you going to upsell to?
Many of Chelsea’s recent signings have been duds; many have not. The 18-year-old Brazilian, Estêvão, right, is a star of tomorrow and already the world’s most valuable teenager not named Lamine Yamal. Cole Palmer cost £42.5m: a modern-day bargain.
While this winter window will be quiet, player turnover under this ruthless perform-or-leave model is high and summer signings and sales are expected.
Having Strasbourg to loan young signings to for first-team exposure is a valuable asset but not uncontroversial.
Chelsea under Roman Abramovich had a knack of winning trophies even when not top dog.
There was more than a bit of that about the way they dropped into the Conference League and won it and then won the Club World Cup in July.
BlueCo have taken those gongs as signs they are on the right track back to the summit. Fans remain less sure.
Trophies and wins against Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona tallied with ambitions, but consistency proved out of reach for Maresca. Can Rosenior deliver it? Can the Chelsea model?
The power at the Bridge
Todd Boehly was the face of early BlueCo but Clearlake Capital is the majority shareholder.
Its co-founder, Behdad Eghbali, spends more time on club matters than most private equity firm partners do on any single investment; Chelsea has become his passion project.
There are no fewer than five sporting directors. Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, contracted to 2031, make the big decisions and are going nowhere.
Ex-Liverpool recruiter Dave Fallows, who convinced them to sign Mohamed Salah, joined in November with a wide-ranging football development remit, and he works “closely” with sporting director for scouting and talent, Joe Shields, and sporting director for global recruiting, Sam Jewell.
Results of a supporters’ survey of 4,000 Blues fans this week showed just one per cent feel Chelsea’s sporting department is well-structured and effective.
The sporting directors lead on player signings; Rosenior, as at Strasbourg, will be one of many transfer consultants, not a recruitment lead. Huge power is given to the medical team.
Maresca felt he could no longer freely pick his team, but Standard Sport understands Chelsea believe Rosenior will be better at rotating players and accepting medical staff’s word as final.
Maresca became emboldened, felt he deserved more power after delivering trophies, but that is not how things work at Stamford Bridge, where boardroom trumps dugout every time.
Head coaches are dispensable. Rosenior has been warned.
After five permanent managers in as many years, fans fear the era of enticing the calibre of José Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti to their corner of west London is over.
The revolving door risks never letting a manager into the building for long enough to afford Chelsea entry back to the very top table of English football.
But Rosenior is head coach, not manager. Some have called it an unambitious appointment, others believe it was the seamless, obvious choice - and the very epitome of how the ascendant multi-club ownership model can work.
Why him?
Having considered Xavi and interviewed their own former defender, Filipe Luís, Chelsea settled on an English head coach with no Champions League experience. Rosenior, though, is a highly impressive individual.
He first met Winstanley more than 15 years ago at Brighton, where he then met Jewell as he swapped playing for coaching. Stewart, then a young analyst, would watch clips with a young Rosenior at Hull, the club Rosenior would go on to manage in between his first job, Derby, and Strasbourg. He may not yet know the club, but he knows the people.
Chelsea insiders believe his style of play suits the recruitment strategy, which is the single most ironclad thing at the Bridge. And unlike his predecessor, he probably won’t speak with City about succeeding Guardiola.
Rosenior has not won anything in management and must win over stars such as Palmer and Fernández, but he arrives having left Strasbourg top of the Conference League, seventh in Ligue 1, and beaten Oliver Glasner’s Crystal Palace and Luis Enrique’s PSG. He beat Maresca’s Leicester while at Hull. The scorer? Liam Delap.
Rosenior is seen by Chelsea chiefs as “media-savvy”, a diplomat unlikely to air dirty laundry in public. He becomes the face of the club and its link to the fans, with whom a bond must develop.
Calum McFarlane, the Under-21s head coach who took the City and Fulham games as caretaker, believes all English coaches will be “rooting for Liam” and Wayne Rooney, who he worked with at Derby, calls him “as good a coach as I’ve ever worked with”.
Rosenior has charisma, a tactful communicator who believes “coaching is 90 per cent people skills, 10 per cent football”.
The way he describes his football has a ring to it: “beautiful yet pragmatic”.
The BlueCo clubs play intentionally similar football, so Chelsea fans can expect a familiar possession-dominant style with a 3-2-5 build-up in possession.
Shortly after retiring, Rosenior began to pen a tactics column for The Guardian. No one could accuse him of not having thought deeply about the game.
The Wandsworth-born former defender watches every match back at least four times, twice in wide angle and twice from broadcast camera angle.
He likes to give a day off after a game so players can unwind and spend time with families (who knows if that will wash at Chelsea), and gives players one-on-one feedback at bespoke times depending on their character and when the information will be best received.
Chelsea are bottom of the Premier League fair play table, so he needs to sort that out, and while the squad were very fond of Maresca, the Italian never got the best out of talisman Palmer. Rosenior must.
He keeps the same bosses - who like him - but is now granted the chance to coach Palmer, Caicedo, Reece James, Estêvão. An almighty promotion for Rosenior is just the natural next chapter of BlueCo’s Chelsea project.
Wrapped up in all this are the keys to a job that should be an immense privilege to its latest incumbent. Chelsea believe he’s up to it.
