A wild Chelsea fan theory emerged over the weekend after Germany manager Hansi Flick was spotted at Stamford Bridge for the Blues' Premier League game against Fulham on Friday. Rumours surrounding the significance of his appearance then started to develop after Graham Potter saw his side fail to beat the Cottagers in a west London derby three weeks after losing to them at Craven Cottage.
Despite a superb unbeaten start, Potter's status as Chelsea boss has been under scrutiny for practically his whole tenure, with fans particularly upset at the dismissal of Thomas Tuchel just 15 months after he had won the Champions League.
The 4-1 defeat to his former employers Brighton kicked off talk of a premature exit with six defeats from 13 games following that result. Performances have improved in recent weeks with the Blues able to keep three clean sheets from the last three league games, taking home five points out of a possible nine.
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The poor run of form prior to and during January saw Todd Boehly invest even more money than what was spent in the summer to acquire eight new players for Potter, totalling a spend of £323million. Malo Gusto was signed but headed straight back to Lyon on loan, however Benoit Badiashile, Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke and Enzo Fernandez have all been brought in for sizeable fees with the latter two making their debuts on Friday.
Despite a difficult first few months, Potter continues to have the backing of Boehly and Behdad Eghbali. "The owners are billionaires so they’re quite smart," Potter said last month in the middle of Chelsea's poor run of form. "Smarter than me, that’s for sure. So they understand the challenges that we have and the direction we want to go in. I’ve been here four months and five, six weeks of that have been lost to international football.
"I think Pep (Guardiola) was (at Manchester City) a year before they’d won anything, and then obviously Mikel (Arteta) and Jurgen (Klopp) took a bit of time.
"But obviously it’s maybe different for me, for some reason. But I don’t put a timescale on it. I know the responsibility we have here. There’s nothing you can do, but certainly I’m not here to convince anybody. I’m here to do my work and then if that convinces them that’s fine."
Such are the ramifications of leading a club as huge as Chelsea, pressure is always on to get the desired results and consistently be competing for the top prizes. Therefore, when Champions League winner Flick was picked out in the crowd, speculation over why he was there was always going to occur.
Flick endured a difficult World Cup with Germany as he was unable to guide them out of the group stages following a matchday one defeat to Japan, but his job was confirmed as being secure by the DFB after the tournament concluded. Italian journalist Fabrizio Romano has now spoken on the rumours surrounding Flick possibly taking charge at Chelsea.
Writing in his exclusive CaughtOffside column, he said: “Germany manager Hansi Flick was spotted at Stamford Bridge, so there’s inevitably been speculation about the Chelsea job.
“However, Flick has just committed to the Germany job until the Euros a few weeks ago and this is his full focus. I’m not aware of any conversation with Chelsea.”
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