Chelsea lose 2-1 at home to Legia Warsaw in the UEFA Conference League. This is a sentence that people probably would not believe to be possible just three years ago, even if they knew that Chelsea won 3-0 in the away leg.
Unfortunately, what it represents is the situation that Chelsea is in. A situation that, frankly, is just dire.
It should be even more telling that this is a club used to chaos, crises, and madness, yet the fans are nothing but utterly despondent.
€1.44 BILLION spent. 108 arrivals. All since 2022. Just around 600 million more than the second-highest spending team in the world.
Yet, three years later, Chelsea lie 6th in the Premier League with no trophy to show since February 2022 and currently don’t even look like they will win the UEFA Conference League.
And throughout all of this, the message from Clearlake Capital and every manager that joins the club as a mouthpiece for the directors and owners above has been to ‘trust the process and give us time’.
Quite aptly, it was Thomas Tuchel—Chelsea’s most beloved manager since Jose Mourinho—who spoke about ‘the process’ in an interview after being sacked by Chelsea.
He made a striking point:
“It can not take too long, or people will not trust the process anymore”
There is a monumental sense of irony in regards to Tuchel saying that and what’s happened at Chelsea since his dismissal, and also a monumental sense of contradiction in the idea of a process in the steady flow of weird decisions made every month at Chelsea Football Club.
Most people, especially those in Football, would be under the assumption that a process would consist of the following steps:
- Appoint a manager
- Establish a solid plan in how to build a squad around the manager you hire and the club culture
- Do not buckle under pressure
- Expect to see glimpses of results
Yet, since the process began, Chelsea have had three permanent managers in three seasons.
And more concerningly, they have stripped the Chelsea squad of anyone who was actually at Chelsea before 2022 (apart from Reece James).
I simply cannot understand what the project is if it consists of chopping and changing managers every season.
The Chelsea of old did this, and they definitely were not a ‘project’.
The Chelsea of old had its flaws, but it was Chelsea. That’s what made Chelsea, Chelsea.
An inherently flawed team of character, persistence, and ruthlessness. A demand for success. A passion for winning. A culture of trophies.
This is not what Chelsea is today. And that is why Chelsea fans don’t even know if what they support is Chelsea.
A ‘process’ ‘project’ club that, in the hard times, points to the stats tables.
A club that reminds fans they weren’t in the top 4 for the last three years. A club that says it will all get better in a few years.
A club that says they will back every manager they appoint, for that same manager to be subject to abject criticism from the fans and to be subsequently sacked within a season.
This is categorically, factually, and summarily NOT A PROJECT.
And it looks like we are aimlessly walking into a deja vu ridden summer as last.
Gross misallocation of funds into inexperienced, non-guarantee quality signings, while likely selling players we were promised years ago would join the first team and make a difference.
Again, This is not what a project is.
Enzo Maresca is steamrolling into the famed Chelsea hall of sackings, and he is helpless. He has lost the support of Chelsea fans.
His style of football cannot appease the furious Chelsea fans. And though it probably sounds like it, it isn’t his fault.
Enzo Maresca was, and is, a manager with top potential at the top level. But he is, and was, an inexperienced gamble who was thrown into a tinder box with the expectation he would perform at top levels and manage the tinder box that was already sparking.
Within 20 minutes of the 24/25 season, fans were booing his heavy possession approach against Manchester City.
It’s easy to look in on the situation and think that it isn’t tough, but it is. It’s a very tough situation to be in.
Performing to a good standard between September to December and getting Chelsea up to second in the league was still not enough for Maresca to gain long-term support from the majority of the Chelsea fanbase.
Enzo Maresca is not the finished article as a manager. He’s far from it. He can be divisive. He can talk some absolute nonsense at times in press conferences.
He can make questionable team selections, he can profile players weirdly, but he isn’t a bad manager.
Every manager has flaws. They have upsides and they have downsides. Yes, Maresca has quite a few downsides, but he has quite a few upsides, he’s good tactically.
He’s handled the pressure reasonably well so far. He’s got Chelsea into the top four for the majority of the season whilst simultaneously being dealt multiple bad hands from fans and sporting directors alike.
As far as modern managers go, he’s certainly not bad tactically. Any indication that he is, in my opinion, is either ill-informed or intentionally obtuse.
Again, perfection is not the word to describe his footballing philosophy and approach to games, and it definitely isn’t a philosophy that appeases Chelsea’s culture, but it’s something that is definitely good enough to establish long-term success at a football club.
However, in a last-ditch attempt at appeasing an already riled-up Chelsea fan base, he has only managed to hammer in the nail in his own coffin further.
I can understand the idea that fielding a full-strength team against an obviously weaker Legia Warsaw could potentially result in a thrashing and build confidence in a squad very low in confidence, but as much as there was upside in that plan, there was a lot of downside, and we unfortunately received the downside.
What we received was a strong starting eleven full of players who did not want to get injured, were low on confidence, and clearly playing under pressure.
And in return, the fans who spent money to watch it were left frustrated as Chelsea missed easy chances (again), conceded from defensive mistakes, and lost a game they really should’ve won comprehensively.
It’s a shame. I just don’t see Enzo Maresca coming out of the season alive. Fans just want to win, and we don’t have the tools to do that. Chelsea have a team good enough for top four on paper.
But they also have a young, inexperienced team that, depending on luck and environmental factors, could sprint between title contenders and a mid-table performing team in an instant, and this is exactly what has happened during the season.
There is no presence on the pitch or behind the scenes that can rally the team and lift them in a difficult moment. This is all by design. The entire season.
And, by now, I think you get the point that Enzo Maresca is the one who is blamed for everything.
He is blamed for young players being young players and going through a hard moment.
He is blamed for making questionable, inexperienced decisions, even though he is an inexperienced manager.
He is blamed for having difficulties beating a low block, even though we have no striker who can beat a low block.
He is blamed for slowly fading out by the end of the season, even though we have a squad with no sufficient Premier League level depth that can compensate for any form of injury problems (which we have had).
He is blamed for poor results, when we may be missing our only players that are actual *top* players through injury.
He is blamed for the goalkeeping problems, when we currently have no better goalkeeper at the club than what he has at his disposal.
And ultimately, he cannot stand up for himself. While it shouldn’t really matter, at the end of the day, it does. He has no credentials.
Who even is he? That’s what many Chelsea fans question, and it’s a question that conveniently allows Enzo Maresca to be blamed and be the fall guy for the systemic failure that is Chelsea Football Club right now.
We are talking about a team that, after 1.4 billion euros spent, lacks a solid goalkeeper, a solid striker, a solid consistent winger, and a solid consistent starting centre back.
It is always the easy option to blame the manager. People think – It’s fine, sack him. Hire someone else. But the attention has to be turned towards the people who make these decisions.
Will an upgrade on Enzo Maresca even be hired, or will they hire another flavour of the same dish that Enzo Maresca is?
Another inexperienced manager who will take the fall for incompetence and misallocation of investment into the squad?
The atmosphere at Chelsea is grim. The players and fans are at an obvious disconnect.
A good proportion of the match-going and online Chelsea fanbase absolutely despises Enzo Maresca.
Chelsea’s biggest rivals are swimming in the idea of potential European success, whilst Chelsea fans question whether they can even win the UEFA Conference League.
But, regardless of your thoughts on Enzo Maresca, good or bad, the constant manager merry-go-round has to stop somewhere.
There is no process if we sack another manager. There barely is a process now anyway.
At the end of the day, Thomas Tuchel was right – people don’t trust the process anymore.
