Well for one thing, they need to sort out who the hell is going to be in the squad next season. At the moment, the squad is far too big and unwieldy. So, we are going to see a lot of players leave, maybe even some we don’t want to see go. I think the main thing to look at is to move on academy players that have failed to make a spot in the starting line-up their own. Players like Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Conor Gallagher. As much as it pains me to see someone like Ruben leave without ever reaching the heights he was capable of, space needs to be made for newer recruits and academy prospects to come through. If academy players never leave, the whole system stagnates. Furthermore, the need to trim the squad may well give the club reason to evaluate whether it is time for other players to be moved on. If this is to be a true refresh and changing of the guard, some really tough decisions are going to need to be made.
I really don’t mind most of the signings that have been made. I think a lot of them could have really positive futures at the club. They have also clearly targeted a particular profile of player, looking to recruit the best young talent they can. With a manager like Mauricio Pochettino, who often excels in coaching younger players in his high-intensity style of play, this could be an extremely prescient thing to have done. I think you also have to remember that not every signing works out as intended. There are plenty of examples of that at any club you care to mention. I mean, just look at Eden Hazard. He left Chelsea to join Real Madrid having just completed a wonderful season, where he was easily the best player in the team and had scored twice in a European final to win his sixth trophy with the club. Four years later, he leaves Real Madrid a year early on a free, after a torrid stint in the Spanish capital. And it is not necessarily anyone’s fault if a signing doesn’t work out. So many factors can mean the transfer just does not work out as you hoped. And there are a couple of players who arrived in the last summer window that I think could very easily be moved on. Players like Kalidou Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Expectations simply haven’t been met. And again, that is not only their fault. They haven’t always been starters in the team; the team shape and play style may not have suited their abilities to bring the best out of them. Sometimes it is just for the best to sit down with each other and admit that things haven’t worked out as hoped and the best thing to do is to part ways.
The biggest thing in the way of Chelsea returning to regularly challenging for the top honours in the game, in my opinion, is Manchester City. They have just reached another level this season. Maybe not in the numbers, but in their approach. It just continues to evolve and change. I’ve gone into some detail about how much Pep Guardiola has impressed me this season, so I won’t go into it too much here, but his tactical shift partway through the season was nothing short of genius, and showed how much he has learned over the course of his managerial career. He is not the same manager he was at Barcelona or even Bayern Munich. In fact, I would say Guardiola is reaching his apex as a coach; just so imaginative and yet able to easily coach his players to execute it perfectly. He has raised the bar so high in this league now, that you have to have one of the best teams ever seen in the division’s history to even challenge City. Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp needed to reach such a high level to beat them that they needed an entire season to recover from it. Chelsea absolutely have the players (I think) to take on City, and they have a coach that is known for developing young players. They won’t challenge straight away; Pochettino needs time to get his ideas across to the players that he wants to work with. Expectations need to be realistic. Champions League football might not return to Stamford Bridge immediately. There just aren’t enough spots for Europe’s top competition to go around. So they is a lot of work ahead for Chelsea, but there’s no time like the present is there?
Eat, Sleep, Blog, Repeat 