The Friday Mailbox asks where we see Chelsea this season, while defending Gareth Southgate and highlighting Paul Pogba’s lack of self-awareness…
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What are Chelsea?
Not to want to stop your daily columns about how the 4th best team in England last season are going about the summer window, but there’s this weird acceptance that now that Chelsea are no longer under the constraints of HM Government licensing laws, they’re just going to get back to doing what they’ve done for the last 19 years.
The way that Chelsea were run for 19 years was unbelievably success but, when you step back from it…………….intensely weird. A state of affairs best summed up by the presence of Baba Rahman on their longest serving players list (2 contracts signed since his initial signing) and not having played for them for coming on 6 years now.
Which leads me onto a question I’d really like answered: what even are Chelsea now?
It seems unlikely that they’d be able to undertake major and much needed squad surgery without the ownership basically just throwing money at it (as they would previously) or getting rid of a number of ageing and sometimes underperforming players (again, see the Baba Rahman example of prior action). For the last few years at least they’ve basically existed as an island bridging the top 2 to the rest of the chasing pack but it seems today they’re a lot closer to competing for those 3-6 places than they’ve been to 1-2 (bar the odd ‘Mourinho’ season) for the last 19 years.
Simon, London
Fixtures fury
I’m gonna moan for City.
What no one points out is how often we get to start at home for the first game of the season! And todays fixtures show, that not only do we start away again, but we end away too.
Since Pep took over in 2016, we’ve had – Sunderland ( H), Brighton (A), Arsenal (A), west ham (A), wolves (A) , Spurs ( A), West ham ( A)
Last game of the season- Watford(A), Southampton (A), Brighton(A), Norwich (H), Everton (H), Villa ( H), Brentford ( A)
So in the past 7 seasons we’ve started away 6 times- how is that anywhere near fair? True we can beat most teams but came unstuck against Spurs, West Ham is now a tricky game.
In the past 7 seasons, we’ve finished the season at home 3 times. Woop woop.
It’s random but not that f***ing random
KA
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Pogb-uh
Pogba really…
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