In one of my discussions last week with Religion I mentioned that I wanted to write something entitled Tuchel vs Mount. I was basically describing why I thought they would move on from Tuchel as soon as they had a DoF, probably before the winter window.
All of that is a moot point now, but this highlights that it was only a surprise in that it was a month or two earlier than expected. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
But people are misreading the “why”. Roman was super ruthless, and it was all results driven. Boehly’s group want to have the right person for their project, the one they’ve chosen.
They have been through this before. In that situation they actually liked Mattingly, but he was the incumbent manager, and it never really gel’d or felt like their project, and trying to do the same things just with more money wasn’t working. Mattingly was baseball royalty. They eventually signed “their” guy, and even through a few disappointing seasons he has been the manager for 6? Years now?
They specifically said in interviews at the time that the fact they didn’t hire Mattingly always came up as an issue in the relationship with the new owners.
With coaches THEY hire, Clearlake does not have a reputation for quick triggers. The manager they hired was well thought of in baseball, but not a big name. Roberts had only managed for one year with the Padres before getting the Dodgers job.
This all looks a little Deja Vu to me. Except, unlike Mattingly, I don’t think they care for Tuchel.
The Ronaldo stuff is just silly. First, Boehly doesn’t make unilateral decisions for the ownership group: so him “needing” a particular player would probably carry little weight. Second, they agreed to not go for Ronaldo, and they made the decision to go for Potter before they ever saw Auba play. Third, there were MUCH more serious issues in their relationship:
They don’t like how he plays. Even when we were winning it wasnt exactly fun to watch. Without Kante, they struggle to find a place for Mount (a key academy graduate and already a team leader) in Tuchels system.
I personally think the handshake incident with Conte was an issue for them.
There WERE issues where things came to a head during the transfer window, but the most serious ones involved them feeling like Tuchel blindsided them. On Chelsea content sites news was coming out that Boehly was trying to block a Tuchel sanctioned sale of Gilmour and was supposedly … not happy. That was about two hours before Gilmour sale was announced. Tuchel had told them we were “fine” in midfield only a few weeks earlier, and had told them to hold off on making a bid for Sangare in June. It left them completely out of sorts deadline day.
I can believe Boehly was interested in Ronaldo, but that being the prime issue …. the timing is wrong. Your media just like the clicks for Ronaldo stories I think.
If Potter does come I believe he will be supported. Chelsea are apparently interested in making one of Potters staff the new head scout… a position they just made available just under a week ago. I believe them when they say the DoF will be in place soon.
There is more thought that went into this than people are realizing. If I had to guess, Tuchels been a lame duck for at least two weeks. And yes, that means this probably didn’t come as a “shock” to Graham Potter.
Boehly and Clearlake have never had a reputation of being difficult to work with. Tuchel has had that reputation at every place he has been to, hasn’t he? If Roman was still in charge I would feel different about letting Tuchel go, because he knew what he was getting when he hired him. But new owners don’t generally keep incumbent coaches. They almost always end up wanting “their” guy. Tuchel will get a golden parachute and land some where great. And the Damacles sword hanging over the Chelsea Clearlake project can get put away, and the effort started in earnest. When you know something is inevitable, just do it.