Despite the recent managerial change, Chelsea struggles to make significant improvements. The team continues to face fundamental issues with squad construction, tactical inconsistencies, and a lack of experience. This article analyzes the ongoing problems at Chelsea and explores how the club's approach to addressing them has been inadequate.
Enzo Maresca has made little progress since replacing Mauricio Pochettino, but that isn't really his fault. Chelsea 's aspirations of reaching the top four are fading fast, with five top-flight games without a win and an increasingly pervasive feeling that nothing has fundamentally changed. While Pochettino had the benefit of half a season's experience, he also spent much of that run with at least 10 players unavailable.
His side conceded more goals, but also scored more and lost just one of their last 15. This isn't to say Pochettino's departure was wrong, just that everything since hasn't obviously moved the needle. This squad remains almost randomly constructed in places, the bungled product of opposing minds and motivations and plans. It still occasionally needs repeating that £1.3bn has been spent to get here. Several key players, like Reece James, Wesley Fofana, Romeo Lavia, and Malo Gusto, are injured too often to be relied upon, however brilliant they otherwise might be. There are too many center-backs who are not good enough to trust but slightly too good to give up on. Watching Robert Sanchez in goal feels like watching a tipsy tightrope walker cross a canyon. Everything else is a mishmash of unrealised or misplaced talent and overpriced prima donnas, the youngest squad in Premier League history. Ben Chilwell is rumoured to still be alive somewhere. All of this is as true now as it was a year ago, bar Sancho’s addition and Cucurella’s renaissance by inversion. And yet how were these issues dealt with in the summer? Let’s run through the permanent signings. Omari Kellyman (£19m): 0 senior minutes. Marc Guiu (£5m): 32 Premier League minutes, however hard he tries. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (£30m): 0 league starts. Joao Felix (£44.5m): one league goal, lots of vaguely threatening runs into traffic. Tosin Adarabioyo (free): not trusted to start on Tuesday behind an 18-year-old. Filip Jorgensen (£20m): fine in his few appearances, but no obvious upgrade. Renato Veiga (£11.8m): a relative success story, who believes it’s gone so well he’s now forcing his way out. Aaron Anselmino and Caleb Wiley: immediately farmed off on loan, with the former recently recalled. Planning for a future they cannot guarantee will come. That’s it, bar Pedro Neto (£51m), the statement piece in this exhibition of misfits. One league goal and two assists is a bizarre underperformance for someone who averaged a goal contribution around every three games at Wolves. Whether an issue of tactics or confidence, something doesn’t fit.And so because the problems of 2023-24 were not addressed, they haven’t been solved. Some of them got worse. Maresca is yet to play anyone over the age of 28 this season. This is not some fun experiment – it’s a fundamental flaw of squad building. The long-running discipline difficulties and more recent concern around game management can be directly linked to a dearth of experience across the playing and coaching staff. Against Bournemouth, a brilliant first half was betrayed by a childishly poor second. The inconsistency of youth remains a problem at all levels and ignoring that is clearly not making it go away. Then there are the long-running tactical issues – struggles with deeper defences and teams which give Chelsea the ball. Before Tuesday, across the four previous league games they scored twice and earned two points, while averaging 65 per cent possession, including 75 per cent or more against Ipswich and Everton. And as their share of the ball rose against Bournemouth, so did the number of chances conceded. After 30 minutes Chelsea had managed 43 per cent possession, rising to 53 by half-time and 56 after an hour. That first half-an-hour was their best. This is not a club built to plan the perfect heist; they thrive on smash and grabs, on feeling for unlocked windows and finding keys left under the plant pot. Recent matches have felt like an attempt to remedy that by exerting greater control, perhaps Maresca further implementing his tactical vision, but more time on the ball has just encouraged more defensive errors and concentration lapses. Poor results have been framed as a blip, perhaps even a mini-crisis, but that misinterprets everything that came before. As Maresca rightly maintained, this was never a title-challenging team, rather one overperforming through a cocktail of confidence, fortune at the back – Chelsea’s defensive expected goal (xG) figure suggests they should have conceded seven more in the league – and some smart management. So unsurprisingly given how little really changed at Chelsea throughout 2024, bad form following good is just an anticipatable return to the mean. This is, as it was by the time Pochettino had a fully-fit squad, a team perfectly capable of challenging for the top four without the distractions of elite European football. Eight of the 11 starters against Bournemouth also played at least 20 games last seaso
CHELSEA FOOTBALL PREMIER LEAGUE SQUAD PROBLEMS TACTICS MANAGERIAL CHANGE MARECSA POCHETTINO TRANSFER MARKET
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