TOUGH TIMES FOR POTTER

Graeme Souness, former Liverpool and Scotland captain, says Todd Boehly is the latest in a long line of wealthy individuals to come into football thinking the game is easy. “It generally takes new owners such as Boehly who think they know it all a couple of years to realise they actually don’t,” he says. “And by that time they’ve spent hundreds of millions of pounds on bang-average players because they’ve been listening to the wrong advisers.”

Martin Samuel, chief sports writer at the Daily Mail newspaper, says the sacking of Tuchel was crazy. “Common sense, logic, the owner’s marbles – all have been lost at Chelsea this season. Tuchel’s sacking isn’t about results. Maybe Chelsea’s owner just awoke one morning and decided, ‘This guy? He’s not my kind of guy.’ It makes as much sense as anything else.”

The new guy has his work cut out for him. Chelsea’s first competitive matches of the season saw them win three, lose three and draw one. They scored eight goals while conceding 10. Even lower-ranked teams such as Fulham scored more.

After what would turn out to be his final match in charge, Tuchel said, “I don’t know where this performance comes from. It’s a lack of hunger, intensity, a lack of determination to do things on the highest level. You can’t expect to win games, not in the Premier League or Champions League. We aren’t where we want to be.” And he’s nowhere in Chelsea anymore.