Boehly is more ruthless than Roman Abramovich, albeit its chaotic ruthlessness! Chelsea have SACKED Graham Potter after only 6 months in charge of the club as the team dropped into the bottom half of the Premier League.
How do you spend £600M on 17 new players and not only find yourself 11th in the Premier League after 28 games, but also go through TWO high-class managers in under 8 months? Ask Chelsea as they find themselves in exactly that situation.
So, for those who haven’t seen the news yet, Graham Potter has been officially sacked by Chelsea and owner Todd Boehly after being beaten 2-0 by Aston Villa, sending the club sent into the bottom half of the Premier League. Not great, right?
Yet, even though the results haven’t been good, I have to defend the English manager as Potter was on a 5-year contract and was hampered by Boehly’s interference at EVERY. SINGLE. POSSIBLE. OPPORTUNITY.
I don’t think there’s a worse run club in the top-flight of English football right now than Todd Boehly’s Chelsea as he’s taken the Blues from winning Premier Leagues (last win 2017), FA Cups (last win in 2018), Europa Leagues (last win in 2019), and Champions Leagues (last win in 2021) to now failing to crack the Top-10 of the Premier League by the start of April.
Of course, I can’t attribute the failures of Chelsea’s players onto Boehly as he can’t step onto the pitch and win the game for them, but I’m definitely going to blame Boehly for oversaturating Potter’s tenure with needless, pointless signings that only served to distract than actually supplement the roster.
After already buying Wesley Fofana, Marc Cucurella, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Raheem Sterling, and Kalidou Koulibaly in the summer transfer window under Thomas Tuchel, why did Boehly then proceed to stuff Potter with another nine signings in January. The Chelsea squad was already too big for Tuchel after the summer window as there were at least three starting-caliber players for every single position on the field, which is a much bigger problem than one would think.
If there’s only 11 starting places and 5 substitute opportunities for 25 players to fill out, then there’s obviously going to be 9 players that’ll never see a minute of action in any given week due to the over-competition.
Thus, with said over-competition, these players, who all have the credentials to start in their own right, will eventually build up resentment towards the manager, other players starting ahead of them, and the club hierarchy as their literally wasting away their careers on the Chelsea bench.
And this was a problem at the very start of Potter’s reign (aka: early September), so you can imagine how the problem only magnified after the nine new January signings came through the door.
Moreover, I have to question how many of these signings were actually ‘Graham Potter signings’ as out of those nine new players, only three (Joao Felix, Mykhailo Mudryk, and Enzo Fernandez) made the starting 11 against Villa in what proved to be Potter’s final game in charge of the club.
A club owner should never just buy players because they are the “next thing” or the “hottest young prospect” or would be heading to a rival team as that not only undermines the message and wishes of the manager, but it also makes the club look like a circus run by clueless, ignorant, moronic donkeys.
Nevertheless, even though I’ve been defending Potter, I can’t overlook how bad he’s managed Chelsea’s attack during his time at the club.
In the 33 games Graham Potter was in charge of the club, his Chelsea sides scored a grand total of…33 goals. So, for those who aren’t great at mental math, Potter’s teams averaged just 1 goal per game…which obviously not going to win many games, if any.
Thus, I understand the urge to sack Potter as he wasn’t getting much out of his team, but there’s a reason why he was coaxed out of Brighton (who find themselves in 6th place) as he was given a 5 YEAR DEAL to make his mark on the team. Sure, if Potter finished the season below 8th place, it would be justifiable to sack him, but Chelsea still has another 10 games left to leapfrog into the Europa Conference League places.
I’ve heard rumors that former Barcelona and Spain manager Luis Enrique and former Bayern Munich boss Julian Nagelsmann are in the running to take over the position, but I’d be extremely cautious if I was them.
Todd Boehly has proven that he’s ready to buy players for himself and prematurely fire any manager, regardless of if they’ve won Champions League or are one of the promising young candidates in the world.
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