Could've been worse, they could've gotten Nagelsmann in a few weeks 
Graham Potter | turns down Ajax job
- Thread starter horsechoker
- Start date
What are all these positive early signs? Genuine question?
From the outside you’ve just had a very expensive and very bizarre transfer window which saw you trying to sign anyone you got a faint sniff of being available, being rejected by the majority and still scrambling for players on deadline day whilst leaving gaps in the squad.
You’ve then paid a combined package of £95m to remove your current manager and within 24 hours appoint a new one after the seasons started and the transfer window closed. You’ve even let him bring in his own Head of Recruitment but yet after all this time you still don’t have a Director of Football!
The signs look…. weird.
That doesn't signify anything relative. Renown means in expectation of or something reputable by description of. Arsenal and Barcelona are clubs renown for attacking football Chelsea are not. Scoring 100 league goals doesn't change that narrative. That's just a feat that was achieved within a singular season wow, amazing and incredible. You can add your own superlatives on top of this breakthrough.
I can’t really think of a combo like that in the MLB right now.
I've got to give Chelsea props as being the first (?) top club ('recent' League winners) to finally give a chance on the many up and coming managers, who have performed well at mid-table clubs, we have seen over the years.
Rodgers, Martinez, Poch, Howe, Hasenhüttl etc anyone else I've missed?
Rodgers, Martinez, Poch, Howe, Hasenhüttl etc anyone else I've missed?
Moyes?
ffs.Moyes wasn't so long ago!
And his biggest error was bringing all his coaching staff, leaving a complete lack of top level experience.
The Moyes comparison is legit. Obviously he was out of his depth. But of course there was an air of “arrogance/confidence/knowing it better” among the players who had just won the league.
Chelsea have also very recently won the CL. Will be interesting how they see Potter and how they react especially when they disagree with him.
Chelsea have also very recently won the CL. Will be interesting how they see Potter and how they react especially when they disagree with him.
When you look at what was said before, during, and after the transfer window, it looks much better than the chaos. They shipped out Lukaku to get rid of a cancer in the locker room. Both Marina and Cech opposed it, they wanted to keep him, so both were let go. Marina was leaving anyway. I do believe they wanted to work with Tuchel, but he decided to ignore them and was all over the place on what he wanted. In hind sight they should have just let Tuchel go during the window, but with how much Tuchel had endeared himself to the fans, that could have been even more of a mess. The owners have gone out and made signings to improve the Women’s team. The owners group own professional woman’s teams in the US that are not self supporting other than media producing income. It appears they will fully support the Women’s team. They have gone out and got some of the best young talent and will continue to do so. They are investing into the youth academy and Boehly attends games. They have let go everyone at the club that treated people badly. They were fast to let go several people in Marketing that were just loathsome people. They have hired the person to rebuild Stamford Bridge one stand at a time to keep the team playing there.
https://www.sportbible.com/absolute...pment-todd-boehly-architect-20220722.amp.html
The real criticism is not hiring a DoF. If Michael Edwards was available, they would have hired him immediately after buying the team. It is not that they do not want a DoF, they want the correct person for the club.
Outside of having PL ownership experience, there is not much more you could want from a new owner. If you look at the history of the teams the group owns, they are not shy of spending big on who they want.
Last edited:
And Potter has done the same I think
He is bringing two and a recruiting staff. I am hopeful that Anthony Barry stays and a few others. The reporting so far says that three of Tuchel’s coaches are leaving. If Potter was delayed, Barry was to take charge for the Fulham game.
So why are months passing and they can’t yet find the right person for the DoF job however they can hire Potter within 24 hours of the sacking of Tuchel?
I'm just guessing here but maybe because it was 'easier' to go through a transfer window without a DoF in place than it would be to go through weeks, let alone months of football without a manager?
Do we? They don’t have a great record
Possibly, but I guess my point to that poster (who seems to suggest everything is perfect at the club) is it sure doesn’t look very logical what’s going on at the moment.
Surely first thing to do is nail that set up ASAP
Hope you aren't counting ours, they are the opposite of hands on. But when they are at the forefront of operating the club with their cowboy style it's fun .
You can be a real child at times, or incapable of having a decent conversation.
It's been said the plan is to get a DoF appointed before the World Cup begins in November. With the summer window already gone right now there's no real rush to make that appointment because no player recruitment business is being done anyway so the club have more than enough time to go through a few candidates and eventually pick someone.
Earlier in the summer it was reported that Boehly and his team were hoping Tuchel would get involved in the hiring process as well but he made it clear he had no interest in taking part in any of that and just wanted to focus on the coaching, which is how it was under the leadership of Marina/Cech in the Abramovich era. During the transfer window it was obvious Tuchel didn't enjoy the recruitment part of the job in the slightest and even confirmed in an interview he just wants to coach and would rather leave all that other stuff to someone else. Pretty sure that was one of the key points that resulted in his sacking, in addition to the team having a poor start to the season of course.
I still think Tuchel should have been given more time to sort out the poor form and make the change in management next summer at the earliest if needed but if the club leaders really believe that Potter is the right man to take us forward and have plans for a long term future with him, I'm willing to see how it goes. It also seems Potter will be given a role in the DoF search, in hopes that whoever gets appointed will get be on the wavelength with the manager as well. The end result could be a radical change in club culture that reaps long term success, or it could end up in a disaster where both the manager and the DoF need replacing in a couple of years and everything starts from scratch again. Having seen Potter's team play great football in the PL for a few years I'm choosing to be on the optimistic side of things but also recognize the plan comes with its own big risks.
Off course I count ours, all of the American investors I can think of in English football have been poor in my opinion.
The current Liverpool lot seem decent, don't they?
Think he'll be fine as long as he doesn't sit Thiago Silva down and have him watch Lewis Dunk videos.
Do they? I’ve read many complaints from scousers about them not investing enough whilst at the top
Think Potter will struggle in Chelsea, and Chelsea won’t reach top 4. If so, Potter is gone within May.
To be honest the way they've been hamstrung kinda reminds me of how inhibited we were in them 90s and early 2000s due to spending limit and all , how they had to break their wage structure to keep salah is quite similar to what we had to do with Keane.
Unluckily for them(and luckily for us) they had to face a team with an unlimited well of money to take advantage off, kinda feel bad for them.
They are definitely profit oriented and Liverpool are a prime example.
Chelsea will need to become self sufficient
It seems odd it’s taken several months for the owners to realise Tuchel wasn’t going to align with their values in that case then so surely the better thing to have done would have been to remove him early in the summer?
I just can’t fathom how a new coach and head of recruitment can be brought in within 24 hours and seemingly without any formal process or considerations given to other candidates yet the wait for a DoF rumbles on and on and on.. seems kind of backwards as surely you get in your DoF then build around that long term vision and have them specifically involved in the search for a suitable coach. Not the other way around.
If Tuchel was sacked immediately after Boehly/Clearlake took over without even being given any kind of chance I'm pretty sure the fan reaction would have been way worse. Even now the overall reception wasn't great and I have to say I was personally very much against it but the poor start to the season, both result-wise as well as the performances, at least gave them an easier way out.
You seem to cling on to this '24 hours' stuff with pretty much every post. To everyone else, including the top media sources, it seems obvious this change was something that's been on the cards for Boehly-Clearlake for a good while now and I'd be very surprised if some talks hadn't taken place with Graham Potter much, much earlier already.
Btw the club also interviewed Pochettino and Amorim too. At that time Potter was already the owners' top choice but they still talked to other candidates even if it was just to confirm they still believed they were making the right choice with Potter. Isn't that how it usually goes, you have one top candidate and still consider alternative options in case something seems off?
Long-time Dodgers fan here... the reason why the Dodgers are where they're at now is mostly due to Andrew Friedman
The closest equivalent would be the Dodgers - they are the team that has most successfully married advanced analytics via their front office with financial muscle, and they've been the most successful team in baseball since the Boehly et al takeover.
I’m not really clinging to it. It’s fact? Tuchel was sacked and then within 24 hours Potter was appointed and made one of the highest paid managers in the world.
The total package or removing Tuchel and bringing in Potter at £95m.
Look I’ve said it may end to working out but what I take issue with is this notion from some fans, not necessarily you, that this was all a long term plan and there hasn’t been any chaos at the club. It’s blindingly obvious everything is all over the shop. From the odd window, the arguments with Marina, Cech and Tuchel to the lack of DoF and whirlwind hire of Potter.
It’s naive to think otherwise.
Sure, but it's not a binary choice between everything being perfect and everything being in chaos. I'd imagine Chelsea supporters naturally want to locate the positive elements and give the new regime a chance rather than focus on negativity, especially when we don't know all the details as to what has gone on, and I can't say I'd be any different if it was my club to be fair!
It's also naive to think that everything from Tuchel being sacked to Potter being hired happened all inside 24 hours without any sort of prior planning or talks with potential replacements. The top media sources like David Ornstein have written that cracks started to appear in the relationship between Tuchel and the new regime since about the Orlando leg of pre-season and the decision to sack him was well on it's way to being made already a few weeks before the fact so it's only natural that the process to hire his successor was going on for roughly the same amount of time also.
When the season is already underway and the football is being played with a very tight schedule, clubs generally don't tend to take too long with managerial replacements and a lot of the work is quietly being done behind the scenes even when the previous manager is still at work. For example, Thomas Tuchel himself was hired within 24 hours of Frank Lampard getting the boot and I'm betting if I bothered to go looking I could easily name at least a dozen others at other top clubs where mid-season managerial hires have seemed swift and decisive at least on paper with a replacement hired before the previous guy has hardly had enough time to clear out his office.
As for the 'cost' of sacking Tuchel and bringing in Potter I'm not even going to get into it with you too much. All I'll say about that is you willingly choose the absolute maximum amounts for everything, despite some mixed reporting, and automatically assume that Potter will get his full £12M/y for five years even in the event of him being sacked. That's not usually how manager contracts work, there are very often clauses that only guarantee payments till the end of the ongoing season or the end of the next season at most in case of the manager's contract being terminated. For example I don't think you lot ended up paying Moyes and his staff for the full six years, did you? On the other hand, if Potter actually does stay for five years and gets all that money, he'll very likely have been a big success at the club so it will matter exactly feck all how much he has cost.
I firmly believe that Boehly-Clearlake's initial plan after their takeover was to keep Marina and Cech in place till the end of the summer window (thus no plans to appoint a DoF before) and also keep Tuchel for at least the current season, possibly further if successful, before even thinking of starting to make moves of their own but for various reasons, not all disclosed to the public, they've either chosen or been forced to accelerate these plans. Marina/Cech were the first to go, which resulted in Tuchel having to take on a much bigger responsibility with recruitment that he didn't enjoy and he was in a bit of a meltdown mode since around the Arsenal game in pre-season. Feel free to go look at some of his explosive comments after the match to see what I'm talking about. If he acted that way publicly in the media, how do you think he was behind closed doors both towards his players as well as the new bosses? He also has prior history of falling out with club leaders at both Dortmund and PSG so clearly not the easiest guy to work with when things start to go wrong. Tuchel had a great working relationship with Marina and Cech but in addition to things not exactly working out great on the football pitch early this season, the departure of the previous sporting structure was one of the catalysts that ended up in this total clear-out.
Thank you, that's exactly what I've been trying to say but @TheReligion only sees things as black or white when Chelsea are concerned. A lot of the things we've seen so far under the new ownership group have been far from perfect but I would also say there have been some mitigating circumstances for some of these struggles, some of which I tried to point out above.
The timing for the takeover process being fully completed was also not great, with the new transfer window opening very soon after and our squad needing lots of transfer business done. In an ideal scenario a club takeover would go through sometime mid-season so a lot of these quirks with recruitment personnel etc. would already be settled by the time the summer window comes but in our case that simply wasn't possible due to the sanctions placed on Roman Abramovich and the club's special license to operate scheduled to end as soon as the 21/22 season was over.
Because of some of these difficult circumstances I'm willing to look past a little bit of 'chaos' in the beginning of this new Boehly-Clearlake regime but at the same time I'll say that things have to calm down very soon and having a clear sporting structure in place would be a good start to doing that.
If by this time next year things still seem 'all over the place' it's the right time to panic and start blaming the new owners for having no idea what they're doing but for now me and most other Chelsea fans rather choose to look at the positives and at the very least Boehly-Clearlake have been showing a lot of ambition to running the club, mainly from a financial perspective but also from wanting to be heavily involved in things instead of just being absentees like Glazers, Kroenke etc. Time will tell whether their hands-on involvement and their new policies with longer contracts etc. will be a positive or a negative influence in the long run but at least it shows they're trying to make big changes in the club's culture.
i’ve not done full scientific analysis on this, but do chelsea only hire managers that they think their fans will be able to chant about, easily?
everyone loves the original and witty “chel-sea, chel-sea,” chant. it’s the envy of clubs up and down the land. many teams have tried to emulate it. we ourselves retort by trying to remove as many syllables from “united” as possibly, blending it into an almost monosyllabic “yanited.” city don’t even bother to try and match it, preferring just to sit in shocked silence, in total reverence of the chant. we take chelsea’s appointments:
“pot-ter, pot-ter”
“tu-chel, tu-chel”
“con-te, con-te”
“joe-say, joe-say”
“av-ram, av-ram”
“ra-fa, ra-fa”
even with an outlier like di matteo, it can be cleverly adapted to fit
“di-matt-ey-o, di-matt-ey-o”
i think this ultimately cost pochettino the chance at the job. whilst di matteo was a stretch, “poch-chett-een-o” too, works, but it’s simply too jarring and not such a natural fit. when you’ve got an original banger, you don’t compromise.
everyone loves the original and witty “chel-sea, chel-sea,” chant. it’s the envy of clubs up and down the land. many teams have tried to emulate it. we ourselves retort by trying to remove as many syllables from “united” as possibly, blending it into an almost monosyllabic “yanited.” city don’t even bother to try and match it, preferring just to sit in shocked silence, in total reverence of the chant. we take chelsea’s appointments:
“pot-ter, pot-ter”
“tu-chel, tu-chel”
“con-te, con-te”
“joe-say, joe-say”
“av-ram, av-ram”
“ra-fa, ra-fa”
even with an outlier like di matteo, it can be cleverly adapted to fit
“di-matt-ey-o, di-matt-ey-o”
i think this ultimately cost pochettino the chance at the job. whilst di matteo was a stretch, “poch-chett-een-o” too, works, but it’s simply too jarring and not such a natural fit. when you’ve got an original banger, you don’t compromise.
Last edited:
We’re lucky they didn’t go for ten-hag.
There’s also “Hid-dink”, they learnt their lesson after “Anch-E-LOTT-E”
Don’t think he’ll have many complaints with the squad he’s taking over at Chelsea. Although there mainly tuchel signings, there miles above what he had at Brighton. Can see him taking a couple of Brighton players with him though when the opportunity comes… maybe caicedo and lamptey.
yeah, more than an eyebrow was raised with that appointment.