Roman Abramovich wasn’t known for being patient with his managers, but his changes usually worked. Under Todd Boehly’s ownership, Chelsea have spent a world-record 552 million pounds in a season to become English football’s most expensive joke.
Your previous owner hires a club legend as manager. Unfortunately, he isn’t quite up to the task of competing with the teams at the top table. He gets sacked, and is replaced by a coach renowned for his progressive tactics, but notorious for his prickly personality. He leads you to the pinnacle of club football – victory in the European Champions League – within months of taking charge. The season of consolidation that’s supposed to follow is interrupted by the breakout of war in the Ukraine.
Your owner, who has taken you from being also-rans to more than 20 major trophies, is forced to sell up because of his ties to Vladimir Putin. The new ownership promises even more investment and trophies. But soon after a massive summer spending spree, the man who won you the Champions League is asked to leave.
His replacement has forged a stellar reputation with less fashionable teams. He is very much a ‘project’ manager, an individual who needs time to create the environment that will allow his tactics to be totally effective. Even as he’s struggling to find his feet – the long break for the World Cup doesn’t help – and identify his best XI, there is another big splurge during the January transfer window. At the end of it, the squad depth is impressive. But no one, least of all the manager, seems to have a clue what the best XI is.
The owner’s solution? Sack the manager, and install the club legend that his predecessor fired as the interim manager. The spending during the 2022-23 is 552 million pounds. Not only is that a record for any club in one season, it dwarfs the previous benchmark – the 335m pounds that Barcelona spent in 2017-18.
At the end of it, Chelsea Football Club have a squad that is 11th in the English Premier League, a massive 14 points adrift of the fourth place that guarantees Champions League qualification. They have lost as many league matches (10) as they have won, and have a negative goal difference. They are into the quarterfinals of the Champions League, but now face Real Madrid, the defending champions who just thrashed Barcelona 4-0 on their own turf in the Spanish Cup.
Frank Lampard, the club icon who has returned for a second stint as manager, was sacked by Everton, who have been in a relegation dogfight all season. There is little on his resume to suggest that he will be an upgrade on Graham Potter, and no one in their right mind would even mention his name in the same sentence as Thomas Tuchel, the first victim of Todd Boehly’s mystifying hire-and-fire tactics.
Over the course of nearly a decade, until they had the good sense to hire Eric Ten Hag and given him both funds and the authority to run the team his way, Manchester United had gone from champions to comedy club. Whether it was appointing the wrong people or buying unsuitable players, United became a constant source of merriment for opposition fans.
Now though, there is only one comedy club. Chelsea don’t even have a competitor for that tag. So utterly chaotic has Boehly’s brief tenure as owner been that even fans of long standing – who lived through the Ken Bates and Roman Abramovich years – cannot recall a time of such upheaval. Given the status he enjoyed as a player, they will undoubtedly get behind Lampard. But it would be interesting to know what tiny proportion actually think he’s the answer to their problems.
Remember that this is a league that is home to Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, two of the elite coaches in the game’s history. Aston Villa’s Unai Emery has won European trophies. Thomas Frank, the German who has made Brentford a team no one wants to play, is being mentioned in conjunction with the Tottenham Hotspur job. Eddie Howe has done a spectacular job at Newcastle United, and Mikel Arteta will surely be Manager of the Year if he can hold off Guardiola and win Arsenal a first title in 19 years.
There is so much talent in Chelsea’s ranks that their league position seems like an April Fool’s joke. But Potter couldn’t get them in sync, and his tactics became increasingly bizarre as the slump went on. What will Lampard’s playing philosophy be? With the gap to fourth surely unbridgeable, can he upset Real and go on the sort of Champions League run that Tuchel did in his first few months in the job?
And if Lampard does salvage something from this train-wreck of a season, does he then stay in the job? Would any top manager – and there are a small handful currently out of work, led by Zinedine Zidane, Antonio Conte and Mauricio Pochettino – even want the job, if it means taking orders from someone that looks as clueless as Boehly?
Interesting times lie ahead. A few belly laughs too.
