The past year has been a whirlwind time at Chelsea Football Club as Roman Abramovich's era came to an end and ushered in an age of Boehly-Clearlake. The American consortium won the race to buy the club, but after restrictions, they had to move quick to make changes to the side going into the season.
A huge transfer spend was required in the summer, but the sacking of Thomas Tuchel and the eventual hiring of Graham Potter caught many by surprise. The January window then saw the squad strengthened further, leaving the total transfer spend to roughly £600million, with a huge pool of talent to choose from.
This caused some problems and after a wretched run of form, Potter was eventually dismissed, despite the huge fee paid to land him and his staff from Brighton. Frank Lampard has been placed in interim charge for the remainder of the season, but with the team sitting 12th in the Premier League, the mistakes of the ownership have only been exacerbated.
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Perhaps the biggest concern of all will be the fact that, after such a huge transfer expenditure, the squad doesn't seem stronger at this point in time. It has potential, with the young players clearly offering a chance to become even better, but the balance of the squad has come into question.
The influx of talent has gone against the idea of organic squad growth, all to seemingly get ahead of the market, but with the potential drawbacks that are currently being seen. Jurgen Klopp put it best when discussing Chelsea's fortunes as he told Sky Sports: "I feel a little bit for Chelsea to be honest, because it’s not going well, I think they’re a top, top team, but on the other side it's good to see that you cannot just bring top players together and think it works out.
"You have to build a team and that’s what the guys there underestimated and gave their coaches a nearly impossible job to do. You cannot have two dressing rooms, you cannot train on two pitches, you have to create relationships, you have to create team spirit, and that’s the only reason why I’m a little bit happy about it.
"Chelsea will be fine in the end and they will be incredibly strong next year, but I’m using them just as an example. At the highest level, no, we cannot do it like that - and that’s what we will not do. You have to bring in the right players and build a new team. This team wrote a sensational story and now we start a new one, that’s it."
By creating the overhaul they have, it has added chaos into the squad, with all the coaches that have been in the dugout so far, chopping and changing and looking for a solution. It means that there may be yet more signings needed to help balance things out, making for a costly mistake.
Compare that to the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool over the years, who have slowly built towards having the squad capable of challenging once again. They've created the foundations for the way the team wishes to play, then adding very specific players for certain roles to perfect those ideas.
The Gunners, for example, went out of their way to land Ben White nearly two-years ago, playing a clear role that was still relatively basic. That was then refined further in the summer when Oleksandr Zinchenko was signed, featuring as an inverted full-back, which is a very specific skillset and was only possible once there was a clear tactical identity implemented in the squad which took time.
The team then grows along with the squad and the quality, something that has seemingly been rushed along at Chelsea without any short term gain. The reality of this is that time is the main commodity needed for some of these players to progress, but there's also a need to turn the squad over organically once again, which will also take time.
One of the positives to come could be the addition of Mauricio Pochettino as manager. football.london understands the former Tottenham boss has held positive talks with the west Londoners in recent weeks and is the favourite to become Chelsea's new manager.
The coach has demonstrated his ability to work with young and hungry players, while also demonstrating an ability to turn a squad over in normal time. Perhaps the one mistake made at Tottenham was the lack of backing that allowed him to change the players further.
That is less likely to be the case at Chelsea, should the backing come as it often has for the managers, but Boehly and his sporting directors must heed Klopp's advice of building a squad over time with a clear focus in mind.
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