If success in football were measured by the art of the deal, Chelsea would be top of the Premier League table today. If success in football were measured by churn, Chelsea would be top of the table.
If there were trophies for the club that most eagerly shoved players through a revolving door spinning at the speed of light, Chelsea’s cabinet would be groaning with them.
The hunger, both for acquisition and for disposal, that is Chelsea’s umbrella philosophy and the cornerstone of their financial model, and the ability to turn a profit in the last summer transfer window despite splurging £296.5million on incomings, makes some judges acclaim co-owners Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly as football visionaries.
But when Enzo Maresca’s side runs out at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday evening, it will be hard to escape the reality that this is a club still struggling to marry its executives’ enthusiasm for buying and selling with its rather inconvenient lack of progress on the pitch.
Visionaries? It is hard to discern any vision at all. There is a frenzy of purchases and loans, there are speculators flipping human properties, but there is no sense at Stamford Bridge of a club that is building something, just a lingering unease that the people in charge have turned Chelsea into Swap Shop.
The truth is that Chelsea feel more like a trading post than a football club. Maybe someone should repurpose Dion Dublin and get him to present a series of Players Under the Hammer live from Stamford Bridge every week.
Chelsea have engaged in a frenzy of purchases and loans, there are speculators flipping human properties, but there is no sense at Stamford Bridge of a club that is building something
Co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali might be turning a transfer profit, but are they making the team better?
The pace of change might yield profits but it has left Chelsea as a club without identity on the pitch. Many supporters and most neutrals see a Chelsea line-up this season and struggle to recognise some of their new arrivals.
That kind of churn gnaws away at the bond between players and supporters.
It has got to the point that several players were presented with a special framed jersey at Chelsea’s training ground this week because they had played 100 times for the club. As if it were some sort of remarkable feat of longevity. At today’s Chelsea, maybe it is.
When Chelsea line up, less in matches like Saturday’s clash with Thomas Frank’s team but more in every other competition, it is still hard to know whether you are watching a football match or the Newmarket sales. It is difficult to shake the impression players are little more than horseflesh, thoroughbreds who disappear as quickly as they arrive.
Too often, Chelsea are not trading up. There are few, for instance, who think that Alejandro Garnacho is an improvement on Noni Madueke. The opposite, in fact.
Before he was injured, Madueke was flourishing both for his new club, Arsenal, and for England. Garnacho still looks like the over-entitled show-pony he was at Manchester United.
Increasingly, Maresca is showing signs of tension. He was entitled to be irritated by Liam Delap getting himself sent off soon after coming on as a substitute in Wednesday’s Carabao Cup tie against Wolves but many were surprised by the vehemence of the manager’s public criticism of the player after the match. It smacked of inexperience and naivety.
Delap will now miss Saturday’s game through suspension, which may also have explained Maresca’s intense irritation. He knows the match in north London is a pivotal clash for the away side in particular.
Sunderland’s late winner at Stamford Bridge last weekend was another twist for a Chelsea side that lacks the experience and nous to string together consistent performances
Liam Delap elbows Wolves’ Emmanuel Agbadou 25 minutes into his return from injury – earning Chelsea their sixth red card in their last nine matches
Spurs have undoubtedly made progress under Frank. Chelsea’s season is already at a crossroads and the hard fact is that they might have slipped into the bottom half of the table by the time they kick off in N17.
They have easier games in the weeks ahead, against Wolves and Burnley, that should move them up the table but if they fall to a defeat in north London to match their home loss to Sunderland last week, it will be Maresca’s turn to come under scrutiny.
Win, and Maresca will have some breathing space, especially with those more favourable fixtures ahead, but it is stretching credibility to suggest that Chelsea might yet fashion a title challenge. And that is an indictment of the regime running things at the Bridge.
Arne Slot is coming under pressure at Liverpool after a horrendous run of results and yet the Premier League table shows the champions a point ahead of Chelsea, whose inconsistency is testing the patience of their supporters.
Slot blaming a lack of squad depth after spending half a billion pounds in the last transfer window was not a good look when he did it after Liverpool’s Carabao Cup exit at the hands of Crystal Palace. But Chelsea have been trying the same tactic for the last three-and-a-half years.
Chelsea have, so far, pulled off the trick of spending close to £2billion in the transfer market since Eghbali and Boehly took over and persuading their fans that sneaking into the top four on the final day of last season somehow represents a feat to be proud of.
The same goes for winning the Club World Cup, a meaningless bauble valuable only in prize money. The lustre of that triumph has already faded as the impact of prioritising it and playing on deep into summer is seen in injuries to key players including, most damagingly of all, Cole Palmer.
Chelsea should be challenging for the league title by now with the money they have spent and the number of players they have signed but even at a time when all the top teams apart from Arsenal are travelling through a period of uncertainty, Chelsea are not even close to being contenders.
Cole Palmer has been sidelined with injury and that is not helping any potential bid for a league title
Enzo Maresca will be feeling the heat if Chelsea lose again on Saturday, at Tottenham
To do that, to allow Maresca at least the opportunity to try to prove he has what it takes to build something in west London, to establish the kind of identity that Jose Mourinho established in his first spell with the club, the manager needs a period of stability.
Stability, though, seems to be anathema to Eghbali and Boehly. It does not appear to be a state of being to which they aspire.
And as long as that philosophy holds sway, Chelsea will continue to be a trading post first and a football club second.
