Mad money, no plan and Chelsea STILL don’t have what they need... a No.9
THIS may sound a bit wild, but I kind of know what Graham Potter is going through at the moment.
This whole ‘fling players at the wall and see who sticks’ madness? I had a similar experience when I was manager of Brisbane Roar, in 2019.
When I say similar, I’m stretching the parameters a lot, but back then, I basically signed an entire squad, and had to create a team out of 17 new signings in a few weeks.
There is a whole universe between Chelsea and the Roar. I’m just explaining how hard it can be to have so many players arrive at the same time, and then have to mould them into an effective outfit immediately.
The Premier League is in a totally different stratosphere to the A-League – but there was one other crucial difference. Myself and the coach Tony Grant chose all the players.
When we arrived, 23 players had left, and we needed an entire squad. Tony and I scouted, spoke to people, analysed what we needed, and created a plan, where we tried to make everything fit.
I don’t believe Potter has had that kind of input himself. In fact, I know he hasn’t.
You look at Chelsea’s squad, and their glaring, desperate need in the window was a central striker.
Kai Havertz is not a No.9. Neither is Raheem Sterling, and with Armando Broja injured and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang confined to the bench as soon as Potter had taken a good look at him, their need was a centre-forward.
Yet of eight January signings, none is a proven, top-level goalscorer. Three were kids for the future in David Fofana, Jimmy-Jay Morgan and Noni Madueke, while Joao Felix plays anywhere but No.9, and the rest were for other positions.
So £323million spent, and Potter’s one area of real need left unaddressed. It would be almost comic, if it wasn’t so serious for the manager.
If he’d had an influence, Potter would have insisted on a No.9, and I bet he is far from happy.
It looks suspiciously like the owners have gone out, signed a bunch of players – any decent player on the market – and said, ‘Here, you sort it all out’.
When we signed all those players for Brisbane, we won three of our first 12 matches. It’s impossible to integrate so many players into a team in a couple of weeks, even at that level.
And we knew what we needed and wanted. By the time Covid struck and shut down the league, we had turned things around, had moved up the table and lost only two of our last 13 matches… both by a 1-0 scoreline against the top two sides in the league.
So we recruited a decent set of players for that level, and were on course to make the end-ofseason play-offs. Even so, it took us almost three months to sort things out properly. Potter doesn’t have three months, and no real hope of integrating all those players into his squad this season.
He’ll have to stick with what he knows, and try to get maybe three or four of them into the starting XI. Clearly, you don’t pay £107m to put a player on the bench, so Enzo Fernandez starts, Mykhailo Mudryk looked decent in half an hour at Liverpool, and Felix can make a difference.
I just don’t get why they splashed all that extra cash. Look at the likes of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, who want to operate with relatively small squads, keeping their group tight and together.
Guardiola was even prepared to let Joao Cancelo go and reduce his squad numbers even further for the sake of harmony at City… but there can be no harmony at all for Chelsea, with players wondering what the hell is going on.
There are 30-odd players in the Chelsea squad, not including some of their good kids. That’s too many. What happens to the likes of Carney Chukwuemeka, who was only signed – for big money – in the summer, but now has no clear pathway to the first team?
What happens to Mason Mount, Havertz and Christian Pulisic? It’s just madness to me. It’s not sound football management, it’s like someone messing about on Championship Manager.
And what about the harm such a model can do to football? When a team is able to spend more in one window than the other four big European leagues spent together – and spend almost as much as all the other teams in the Premier League combined – it’s dangerous
It is just an arms race, and only the richest clubs can respond. It’s another step closer to a European Super League, with the Premier League becoming that Super League by default, and the rest of Europe left behind.
It doesn’t sit right with me or many millions of fans across the world. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t sit right with Potter’s instincts either.
It’s like someone
on messing about Championship Manager...