The soap opera with the wackiest plot is set in London.
Except Eastenders has been relocated, the Queen Vic making way for the King’s Road.
The main storyline centres around ruthless owner Todd who ain’t too ‘appy with landlord Graham.
The locals too are restless - thousands of Blues fans signing a petition hoping the gaffer gets the chop after Sunday’s unwatchable show.
If it wasn’t for the sub-plots we’d all have stopped tuning in.
Such as the episode titled Sterling’s Dip in Value - after summer signing Raheem struggled to get to grips with his new role.
This season the England ace has scored just seven goals for club and country. At his previous club, Manchester City, Sterling notched up 19 last year, 19 the season before, 35 the one prior to that, 31 in 2018/19.
And Raheem is not the only player who has failed to nail the killer lines.
Chelsea’s leading scorer in the Premier League this season is Kai Havertz who has the grand total of … five.
That prompted panicky Todd (Boehly) to get some new cast members in January, forking out €120m on Enzo Fernandez.
But the Argentinean has also fluffed his lines - making a real mess of things on Sunday when sharing a stage with ‘Arry, star of Citizen Kane.
Right across the show, newbies are suffering stage fright.
There’s Wesley Fofana, brought in for €80m last summer. He has played just eight times, injury interrupting his season.
We’ve yet to see why Malo Gusto, Noni Madueke or Andrey Santos were added - wondering if they’ll go the way of Timo Werner who was bought and sold for a €26m loss after scoring 23 goals in 89 appearances.
That’s Chelsea. They have a culture of spending way over the odds and paying the price in more ways than one.
And that’s why Made in Chelsea it’s the most viewed drama in London.
Under the old cast, the most ruthless Roman of them all kept viewers interested by suddenly killing off his main characters.
There was Claudio Ranieri who brought the club to a first Champions League semi-final.
Dismissed.
There was Jose Mourinho who won the Premier League twice.
Out the gap.
Avram Grant got the club to the 2008 Champions League decider.
Sacked.
Italian Carlo Ancelotti won the double.
Arrivederci.
Another Italian Roberto di Matteo won the Champions League.
See ya later.
Jose came back in The Special One Returns and won another Premier League.
Soon he was off the cast as was 2017 title winner, Antonio Conte.
So, that’s Chelsea’s modern-day culture, one of those clubs where chaos and triumph rhymed.
They won a lot but did so with new leading men, from Mourinho to Ancelotti to di Matteo to Mourinho again to Conte and then finally the brilliant Thomas Tuchel who won a Champions League and Club World Cup.
But there’s a big difference.
Even when Roman Abramovich was at his most ruthless, sacking managers when he didn’t really need to, there was always a spine of a side there to keep the ship steady: Petr Cech, John Terry, Ashley Cole, Ricardo Carvalho, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba.
Time caught up on them, though, and as their powers faded, so did Chelsea’s.
Look at the number of trophies Chelsea won during the Abramovich era: five league titles, two Champions Leagues, two Europa Leagues, four EFL Cups and five FA Cups.
Now look closer, 13 of those arrived when the core of the Terry/Lampard/Cole team was there.
When they left, all that remained was money and malfunction.
American owner Boehly inherited a stinking culture and made things worse.
That’s why the team in tenth has 31 points from 24 Premier League games, despite spending €843m since 2020.
In the same timeframe the team in ninth, Brentford, forked out €91m - a net spend, though, of just €16m.
The same summer Chelsea bought Werner, The Bees got Ivan Toney.
Only one side was stung.
Toney has scored 62 goals for Brentford at a cost of €80,000 per goal. Werner’s return came at a rate of €2.3m per strike.
We could go on.
Brentford’s owner is a fan who saved the club from bankruptcy and who believed in putting in structures.
Chelsea’s head honcho is an overseas billionaire addicted to putting in strikers.
So you get wasteful spending on one side of London, prudence on the other.
At Stamford Bridge they pay over the odds, at Brentford way under them.
That is where you see deals like Ireland’s John Egan arriving on a free and getting sold for a €4m profit.
Or Irish striker Scott Hogan coming in for €750,000 and then leaving for €12m; a €28m profit being made on Ollie Watkins’ sale, €20m made on Neal Maupay, €20m made on Said Benrahma, €22m on players like Jota, Andre Gray and James Tarkowski who all arrived for a combined total of under €1m.
There is no way Brentford should be ahead of Chelsea in the league right now.
Remember their ground has a capacity of 17,250, Chelsea’s of 40,341.
One side’s owner is worth $15.8 billion, the other’s a reported $30m.
Ironically the Brentford owner, Matthew Benham, made his money from gambling when it is Chelsea who are playing in the last chance saloon.
You look at what they are doing and then you look at another team in blue, the Serie A leaders, Napoli, who sold Lorenzo Insigne, Kalidou Koulibaly, Dries Mertens and Fabian Ruiz - their captain, vice-captain, top scorer and midfield star, because three were in their 30s and the other had just a year left on his contract.
Like Chelsea they went shopping.
Unlike Chelsea they got bargains.
Striker Victor Osimhen has scored 19 league goals in as many games while their other stars have come from unfashionable areas, Georgian Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, South Korea’s Kim Min-jae, Uruguay’s Mathias Olivera, Macedonia’s Eljif Elmas.
The cost? Nothing by the time sales were taken into account.
The result? Napoli are 18 points clear at the top, in line to win their first Scudetto since Diego Maradona was in his prime.
That’s what happens when you plan things, when your owner holds his nerve, when you don’t get rid of a good manager like Tuchel.
That Chelsea are struggling desperately right now is no one’s fault but their own.
And getting rid of their manager isn’t the answer.
Getting rid of their owner is.
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