For all the catastrophising of this Chelsea season, the sheer heft of the club means that they can still attract the interest of the elite level of coaches.
Hindsight may have 20/20 vision, but the build-up to the Champions League quarter-final matches between Chelsea and Real Madrid was strange, nevertheless. For a few days prior to each leg, there was a general suspension of disbelief in the evidence of our own eyes, as though somehow or other the managers involved would be able to lean on some form of shamanism to defy everything we knew about both teams.
But when the chips came down, the tie turned out exactly as we might have expected in the cold light of day. Real Madrid were too good for Chelsea over the two legs. There was a brief moment during the first half of the second leg when it looked as though there could be a route back into the tie, but that flickered with N’Golo Kante’s first-half miss and was finally snuffed out when Rodrygo made the aggregate score 3-0 with just over half an hour to play. Super Frank, it turned out, couldn’t summon the spirits required to overcome such a tall order.
So it’s open season on Chelsea, addressed with ill-disguised glee in the press. ‘Chaotic.’ ‘Season of disarray.’ ‘Woeful.’ And the waters of this ‘crisis’ have been lapping at the toes of Todd Boehly. This isn’t surprising; after all, he is one of the very few constants of this Chelsea season. There was considerable schadenfreude to be had in the footage of angry supporters confronting him as their team slipped to another home defeat against Brighton.
The club has acquired so many new players – the majority of whom are young and very talented – that blaming them for everything that has gone wrong this season has felt like a somewhat futile exercise. The same goes for that revolving door of managers. Including Bruno Saltor (and it’s questionable whether he should even be included, considering that he was only in charge for one match), Chelsea are on their fourth of the season, and while the shortcomings of Graham Potter have been forensically studied, it increasingly feels as though there has been something wrong with the institution of the club itself this season rather than individuals caught in the storm.
But if this season effectively became ‘over’ for Chelsea upon this particular defeat – despite tongue-in-cheek commentary suggesting that they could yet get relegated – what of the future? Well, the first…
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