Chelsea’s owners are once again coming under scrutiny after another abysmal performance on the pitch in front of their own fans.
There was a glum atmosphere around Stamford Bridge again on Saturday afternoon, as I am told by many who were at the game. The toxicity directed towards the manager, the owners, and the sporting directors was rife once again, and there were boos sounding out at the end of the game, which is far from the first time this season. Chelsea fans have had enough.
Drawing 2-2 at home against 10-man Burnley once again just bought out all the negative feelings and brushed aside any slight optimistic hopes.
George Simms of inews has just about summed it all up in his review of the game today.
He rightly says that Chelsea have been setup to fail by the owners and the squad builders, by signing young, unproven, raw, and inexperienced players to fill the squad rebuild.
Simms writres, ‘At any other club, inconsistency would be expected from a selection of teenagers and early 20-somethings, some of whom have played fewer than 100 league games in their career. Failure is the best way to learn, so young players are normally given support and a free reign to make mistakes in a controlled environment. Instead, Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali have dropped theirs into a bear pit dressed as deer and told them to survive or die.
‘Before this chaotic 2-2 draw with 19th-placed, 10-man Burnley, Mauricio Pochettino claimed only “small details” were the difference between his side being 11th and fourth. You don’t need a microscope to diagnose the problem still plaguing his squad, the difference between Champions League contenders and this amalgam of grand possibility.
‘Young players are almost invariably inconsistent in their decision-making. When you combine inconsistent players, you unsurprisingly end up with widespread inconsistency. Mudryk and Conor Gallagher may be making the right decisions in any given moment, but all it takes is Nicolas Jackson not to be for the whole house of cards to collapse.
‘They have since spent £1.19bn on players to make Chelsea demonstrably, unavoidably worse. It is mismanagement of one of the biggest football clubs in the world on a scale which has rarely been seen.
‘The grand plan to invest wildly and solely in youth was based on a pipe dream and financial model never previously seen in football, because anyone who understands the game knows it would be virtually impossible to pull off. Massive-scale change is not an excuse for underperformance when you’re the ones implementing that change.’
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