Saturday, as always, started well. In South-West London the sun was shining, and as I did my weekly walk around Brockwell Park it was hard not to be excited for the weekend of football ahead. Three televised Premier League games on Saturday backed up by three more on Sunday, and of course the main event, Arsenal against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final. Avid readers will see that this game is missing an (a) in it’s title. Thankfully I made the decision not to head up north for this one.
The first Premier League match went to plan. I thought the praise that landed on Liverpool’s doorstep for their midweek destruction of Galatasaray was a little too much given how poor the Turkish side looked. That being said, I certainly didn’t expect Brighton to play them off the park from minute one. Liverpool’s current predicament is an interesting one. Whilst it’s not entirely the same, I certainly see a number of similarities in their current setup and structure when compared to the one we see at Chelsea. Despite spending big in the summer, I’m not sure they addressed their biggest needs. Their selection of attackers is worse than the one they finished last season with, and they lack key depth in both midfield and defence.
Come 2:30pm, I was in a very good mood. I decided to use AI for something a little different and soon found it scanning every single 3pm kick-off in the EFL and Premier League to find me some home teams who were perhaps overpriced in their odds. Two hours later, I was £120 up. My plan to watch Chelsea vs Everton on the sofa was in tatters. I was changed and ready for the pub.
For a long time, the very image of Goodison Park has haunted Chelsea fans. There have been some good days there, the best of which was surely our 3-0 victory over them on the way to winning the 2016/17 Premier League title, but there have been a lot of very bad ones too. Steven Naismith scoring a hat trick against us in 2015 may be the low point.
Heading into this game, my fingers were firmly crossed that things at the ‘Hill Dickinson Stadium’ would be different and, by all accounts, their record has been pretty poor at home this season. Pre-game, their home record was the 14th best in the league, and they’d yet to win two in a row at home.
Step up Chelsea.
One thing needed to be seen from this game: a reaction. A week ago, against Newcastle, we looked devoid of any ideas. Midweek against PSG, we went a step further and were nothing other than humiliated by the visitors from France.
As we sat down to watch the game in the pub, I had a few concerns which I was very open about with my housemate. My biggest was with Robert Sánchez. I feel a lot of the criticism Sánchez has received this season has been over the top. He’s been pretty solid, but in key moments there is still a question mark over him. With Filip Jörgensen ruled out due to surgery on his groin, we now have no competition for Robert Sánchez. The keeper, who rightly or wrongly has been dropped recently, suddenly has no backup. I was concerned this could lead to complacency, and it took just five minutes for this fear to come to fruition. We narrowly avoided conceding due to his carelessness on the ball.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion recently around the importance of managers in football. It has been said that they do not actually matter all that much, and that is very much the philosophy of the BlueCo ownership. When I first saw that view, I was confused. But as time goes on, I find myself agreeing with more of it.
When I look at clubs like Brighton and Brentford, they are so well run that you really can take the manager out and replace them and, for the most part, continue with business as usual. Of course, they are so well run that they already seem to know which manager will come next. When I look at Chelsea, this is not the case. So no, maybe the role of a manager isn’t as important as it was 20 years ago. But when you look at the structure of this football club, it absolutely still is.
I want to like Liam Rosenior. He seems like a great guy. But the club got this one massively wrong. It feels wrong to say, but I found myself willing Everton on to get a fourth last night in the hope that it could prompt faster change.
I need to now see a major structural reset at the top of the club. I’d hoped that our midweek humiliation would serve as one wake-up call. Hopefully yesterday will have a similar effect. Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stuart need to be relieved of their duties at the club immediately. I realise that they are helping to shape the philosophy and direction which comes from a level above, but they have got everything totally wrong from nearly minute one.
What can honestly change? Another protest is due to take place before our game against Manchester United in a couple of weeks, this time involving both Chelsea and Strasbourg fans. I remain sceptical about how much these moments achieve, but perhaps the fact French supporters are flying over gives this one more weight.
Regrettably, a loss against Port Vale in the cup in two weeks’ time would help to galvanise this further.
What’s most frustrating is that once again the competition around us has dropped points and we have failed to capitalise. With only seven games left in the Premier League, a top five finish is still well within touching distance, but we simply do not have it in us to pull together at this point. I didn’t see a team yesterday that really wanted to win.
That starts with the players who should be setting the tone in this squad. Enzo Fernández is gone, and his quotes midweek have all but confirmed this. As one of the faces of the project, that one would sting. But you’d be delusional to think that Cole Palmer and Moisés Caicedo won’t have similar thoughts in their minds.
We now have a two-week international break and, once again, Chelsea fans will be relieved that we do not have to watch our side play for nearly 14 days.
The Shed Diaries 