Graham Potter was sacked as Chelsea manager after a 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa at home. The loss moved Chelsea into the bottom half of the premier league table on April fools day, officially making Chelsea a joke this season. Most if not all Chelsea fans were over the moon as a result of the news of Potter’s departure. I hadn’t seen this many people so happy over someone losing their job since Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister.
It wasn’t surprising that Potter was sacked, the only surprising thing was how long he actually lasted in the job. In the 7 months that he was at the club he recorded Chelsea’s joint lowest points per game alongside Glenn Hoddle with 1.27 points per game. The only difference between Potter and Hoddle was that Hoddle didn't have the financial backing of a small nation’s military budget for transfers.
Even though Potter deserved to be sacked and would’ve been sacked three times by now under our previous owner, the players still need to take responsibility for recent results. They’re the ones that put the ball into the back of the net at the end of the day, not Potter. The quality being shown by these players is nowhere near the quality you would expect from footballers that are apparently worth millions of pounds.
Speaking of putting the ball in the back of the net, clearly that is our biggest problem. Fine, our defence can be leaky at times, especially when our players decide to directly assist our opponents, but we have only conceded 3 more goals than current league leaders Arsenal. Where we massively differ from them is goals scored. Chelsea have scored 29 goals in the league this season. That ranks us 13th in the league for goals scored, a whopping 41 goals less than Arsenal. 10 goals less than Leicester who are currently 19th in the League.
There isn’t anyone in our team that fills me with any sort of confidence that they can consistently score goals. That’s our problem, A player may score in a couple of games but then drop off almost immediately. Kai Havertz for example, is our top goal scorer in the league with 7 goals in 27 games. He sometimes has a good couple of games and maybe picks up 2 or 3 goals but then he’ll have games like the villa one where he’ll be useless and provide nothing up front, not creating any chances and not scoring any.
Of course it isn’t just Havertz. Sterling has had injury problems and consistency issues. Felix is good on the ball but makes the wrong decisions in the final 3rd. Apart from 10m sprints I don't know what Mudryk is particularly good at. Ziyech doesn’t want to be here. Madueke hasn’t really been given a proper run of games yet. Pulisic tends to go missing in a lot of games and I have no idea what is happening with Mount.
He’s very quickly gone from the poster boy of this football club to looking almost destined to leave Chelsea in the summer. I hope a solution can be found soon because the situation is helping no one. Even though Mount also has problems in the final third like everyone else, I’d argue that he is the most consistent out of our forwards and I don’t even consider him as a forward.
The solution to this problem. At this current stage, I don’t know. Maybe a striker like Osimhen could come in the summer but the amount of times this club has signed a forward who has miraculously lost their ability to score is ridiculous.
For now, I think the best option is to find a front 3 or 4 and just stick with that for the rest of the season. The best attacks in football come as a result of the forwards having solid chemistry between each other. Link up play becomes easier when everyone knows what type of runs and movement each other makes without communication. Arsenal have a solid attack because their players know each other’s style and ability inside out. The problem with having such a large squad is that rotation almost becomes necessary to avoid unhappy players causing problems in the dressing room.
Who should be the next Chelsea manager?
With no disrespect to current interim manager, Bruno, I doubt that he is seen as the long term option by the board. My personal choice for the next Chelsea manager would be Julian Nagelsmann. Even if people could argue that he is another Potter, I’d disagree because Nagelsmann has a great pedigree despite him being a relatively young manager. Previously being manager of the biggest club in Germany, Bayern Munich, means that he would have experienced managing at the very top level, unlike Potter before he joined Chelsea. As well as that, he got Hoffenheim into a champions league spot and turned RB Leipzig into Champions league regulars.
Yes he did get sacked from Bayern Munich however, it was not because of his results as manager. His points per game at Bayern was 2.31 and won 60 games out of 84. Tuchel, who was loved by Chelsea fans and ironically enough, took over Nagelsmann as Bayern manager, was sacked by PSG shortly before joining Chelsea and he turned out to be a relative success.
Nagelsmann at Bayern also played a 3 back fairly frequently which suits our current bloated squad. As a relatively young manager, he can fit the role of a manager of a long term project. He also previously worked with board member Christoph Vivell at RB Leipzig so you would hope that communication between Naglesmann and the board would be fairly efficient.
The main disadvantage with Nagelsmann is that because he is only 35 years old. As a result, he may struggle to get respect from the Chelsea players. Previous managers such as Potter and Sarri struggled to communicate their tactics with the players because they didn’t command the same levels of respect as a Mourinho or Ancelotti. However, as I previously stated, you would hope that Nagelsmann’s work at Bayern Munich would give him the experience and pedigree to handle the big egos.
I also believe that Chelsea should not rush into choosing a candidate. With the amount of money that Boehly has spent at Chelsea with, so far, little success in return. He would need to make sure that his next manager isn’t going to fail like Potter did.