Giving Tuchel £300m to spend then sacking him is lunacy
If Boehly decided manager was not his kind of guy then why did he not act sooner?
Everything is missing, thomas tuchel said in Zagreb. And he’s right. Common sense, logic, the owner’s marbles, all have been lost at Chelsea this season.
this sacking, we are told, is not about results. And it can’t be about results because Chelsea’s, while not perfect, are pretty much as expected for a squad of players emerging from a drastic rebuild.
Of the 16 used in Croatia on tuesday night, five were summer signings including a striker making his debut, the goalkeeper was a reserve, the left back had returned from serious injury at the start of this season, and the substitute forward is freshly back from a season on loan at Southampton and has featured for 101 minutes, with no starts.
in other words, strangers. expensive strangers, and credit to the board for that investment, but if Chelsea are playing as if unfamiliar with the game plan and each other, that’s because they are.
We are yet to discover where Marc Cucurella fits in among four centre-halves and Ben Chilwell at left back and, now, maybe we never will. Might tuchel get the best out of Pierre-emerick Aubameyang after their reunion? Who can say, given it has been curtailed after less than an hour of game time.
this is where it makes no sense. if Chelsea owner todd Boehly ( above) was unconvinced of tuchel’s suitability to his position why, less than one week ago, was he still delivering players that only the coach could have wanted?
Aubameyang is a tuchel signing. he is not box office like Cristiano ronaldo, he is no longer a marquee name, he comes with a troublesome reputation. yet tuchel knew him, from Borussia Dortmund, and believed he could get him playing. So just seven days ago Boehly was still working to serve his manager’s vision, and now that manager is sacked.
even leaving Aubameyang out of it, Chelsea have still broken the Premier League record for spending in one window, before dismissing the manager who wrote the shopping list. graham Potter now inherits another man’s squad with very little wriggle room given the limitations around Financial Fair Play.
Chelsea didn’t always adhere to reason during the roman Abramovich years but matters had to have reached crisis point for a manager to be removed mid- season. Luiz Felipe Scolari went after an inconsistent mid-winter and because the owner could see no way past Juventus in the Champions League. roberto
Di Matteo was dismissed after one win in eight games. Mostly, though, Abramovich waited until the end of the season even if some of the terminations were harsh.
tuchel’s departure is different. it borders on lunacy. it’s football’s equivalent of the Buddy rich Bus tapes. rich was a jazz drummer, some would say the greatest drummer, but with a very short fuse.
After a show he would drag his band on to the tour bus and berate them, furiously, for playing a bad set. Curse words and spectacular sentences bounced everywhere. his pianist took to recording these rants which began circulating among comedians. Jerry Seinfeld used direct lines from Buddy rich in his television show.
One of them, he put into the mouth of the great Jerry Stiller. ‘this guy,’ he says — rich was referring to a saxophonist — ‘he’s not my kind of guy.’ Maybe that’s what Boehly felt about tuchel. that he’s not his kind of guy. Fine, the owner chooses the manager. But now? Seven games into the new season? even Buddy rich waited until after the show.
Boehly has spent £271million this summer and then decided tuchel’s not the man to manage it. And Boehly is a venture capitalist and investor. Would you want your investments in the control of such a capricious mind?
if Boehly had misgivings about tuchel why did he not make the change sooner? And if he wasn’t sure of divorce when he was making the last signing of the summer, what did tuchel do in six days to force such a divide?
Potter will almost certainly be Chelsea’s manager and if it is right the wheels of that negotiation were moving even before defeat by Dinamo Zagreb it makes even less sense. Potter has a release clause, which is why Brighton have not stood in his way — but it also means Chelsea could have moved during the close season, or as soon as Boehly had control of the club.
the absence of logic around the timescale is no doubt why so much speculation and contradiction around the decision- making process exists. On one hand, it would seem tuchel did not enjoy being part of the recruitment process, and was not the best communicator; equally, it is being suggested, he did not agree with some of the club’s decisions — such as confirming the return of romelu Lukaku to inter Milan, without a front-line replacement.
For his part, one minute it seems Boehly relied on tuchel heavily, but was then upset at his reluctance to entertain recruiting ronaldo. Again, where’s the logic? either he’s a judge or he’s not.
if the various leaks and briefs make no sense, it is because the decision makes no sense, so no explanation of it satisfies. Boehly wants a collegiate manager who can head the football operation as a whole. But what does that mean? have Chelsea now completely given up their pursuit of Michael edwards, the recruitment guru at
Liverpool? Will Potter’s role be more than that of a coach?
this is by far the biggest job of his career, with enormous expectations. in his first season, it needs
to be streamlined, simplified. he can’t be expected to take the reins of the entire football operation, to be Chelsea’s face to the world.
InDeeD,might it be argued that this has been tuchel’s problem? Chelsea have been unconvincing this season, but that has coincided with a diluting of tuchel’s pure coaching role. he described feeling like ‘a politician’ at Paris Saint-germain, so plainly wouldn’t have been comfortable out of a tracksuit at Chelsea.
if edwards rejected Chelsea, as was written last month, so much more responsibility would have fallen on tuchel as manageradviser. Maybe that explains the collapse in communication, or tuchel’s performances on the touchline which have become increasingly highly strung.
he has always been excitable. this season, however, he has at times appeared manic. Maybe Boehly with his background in image-conscious American sport, did not like that either. Most certainly, this isn’t just about results.
Boehly also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team where Dave roberts has been coach since 2016 and recently signed a new contract until 2025. he has won a World Series, lost two and made the play-offs every season, with varying degrees of success.
So Boehly isn’t a trigger-happy employer. the Dodgers were eliminated in the national League Divisional Series — think of it as the quarter-finals — in 2019 and roberts remained. they blew out in the national League Championship Series (the last four) in 2021 yet roberts signed his new deal. this year has been very good for the Dodgers. Boehly is a patient and admired owner.
yet tuchel is a commendable figure, too. he has been thrust into a unique and unimagined set of circumstances and handled it with grace. Last season when it was even wondered whether there would be a club to manage, tuchel was the best of Chelsea. he spoke intelligently and honestly about the predicament. he did not hide.
he lost two domestic cup finals by the narrowest margins but won two international trophies to go with the previous season’s Champions League.
With his club in chaos and the situation vacant at Manchester United, tuchel had plenty of opportunity to play politics. he played the straightest bat instead. he is a fine manager who deserves another job of significance.
So what gives? Maybe, behind the scenes, tuchel finds it harder to be what his club demands. Maybe Boehly can be patient about results and performances, but not so much with people. Maybe he wants a manager he can lean on as he acclimatises to english football that will guide or steer and won’t hide behind a tracksuit.
Maybe some of it all; or 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.
Common sense, logic, the owner’s marbles — all have been lost