December 21, 2024
Figuratively, Chelsea has met their season’s waterloo, with the hasty replacement of serial winner Thomas Tuchel for a greenhorn in Graham Potter, as you have to go back 30 years in time to find a Chelsea manager with a worse win percentage after 24 games than the ex-Brighton manager.
For a club that spent a whopping £290m in January, and over half a billion pounds on new signings this season cumulatively, you don’t expect the self-acclaimed Pride of London to be
stuck in 10th position, with no hopes of a European place finish.
Definitely, no one saw this level of abysmal performances coming.
It would be quite unfair to say the procurement of Chelsea football club by chairman Todd Boehly from ex-chairman Roman Abrahimovic signalled the beginning of this terrible form, as
the American has shown more than anything his willingness to bring the best legs to the Stamford Bridge, going by the team’s hierarchy reshuffling & players’ signings.
Apart from leading the lines as Chelsea etched their name as the club with the biggest purchase in the history of winter transfers, Todd didn’t hesitate in bringing the best technical personnel to
the club.
The American owner acquired the services of a new technical director in Laurence Stewart and a new co-director of recruitment & talent in Joe Shields — from Monaco and Southampton
respectively.
Did those moves sound like a self-ruination one? Definitely not. However, it’s quite evident that sacking Thomas Tuchel and replacing him with Graham Potter wasn’t the best of decisions.
It wouldn’t be amiss if one said Todd got that move 100% wrongly. It didn’t look like it at first, because when Potter came in, he had an 83% win rate in 6 games;
winning 5 and drawing one. But now taking a look at his last 21 games, the Englishman has just 19% win rate; winning just 4, drawing 6 and losing 11.
Currently, Potter has about 27.8% win rate in the PL, which invariably makes him the worst-performing manager in the history of Chelsea, having outdone the terrible performances of Glenn Hoddle and Ian Porterfield who both had about 31.1% win rate.
Potter’s current win percentage is unarguably measly for a club of Chelsea’s calibre. What about his team’s selection?
Who puts a potent and experienced Pierre Emerick Aubameyang on the bench for a misfiring Kai Havertz, all in the name of youthfulness and agility?
For context, Chelsea with Kai Havertz leading the lines has scored just six goals in the Premier League since the start of November 2022. Would it have been the same if Aubameyang wasn’t
frozen out of the team?
That’s one out of many things wrong with the Blues’, at the moment.
Here’s what Potter said, after their ‘expected’ loss to Spurs in the London derby over the weekend.
“I know the responsibility. It’s not good enough for this club and so I take full responsibility for those results. It isn’t good enough for Chelsea.”
“The players gave it everything, they are hurting. It’s my responsibility.”
The sentence ‘the players gave it everything’ has become a custom for the manager even as the poor results persist. What a mentality!
Is Chelsea’s ‘everything’ with that host of talent-packed squad winning 1 game in the last eleven?
Everything about Potter doesn’t just tick it for Chelsea as a traditional top-six English club.
“I think Chelsea is too big for Graham Potter. What are the reasons to keep him?” said Julien Laurens, via ESPN.
That couldn’t have been better said. Chelsea are currently tenth in the league, and looking at their remaining fixtures, where they still have to play the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle
and the two Manchester clubs, you wouldn’t want to fancy the chances of Potter.
As it stands, Todd Boehly and the club’s hierarchy have to succumb to reality, bite the bullet and accept that Tuchel’s dismissal wasn’t called for — and Graham Potter is not the man to lead the
club out of the mess he has driven them into.
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