Maybe it will start to change against Premier League newbies Luton Town on Friday. Maybe Raheem Sterling will better the good show at West Ham and begin a run that will fetch him 30 goals like he did for Manchester City in 2019-20. Maybe, Nicolas Jackson will not be narrowly off-side, penalties will not be missed and the defence will show more steel. Maybe Chelsea’s season will end like Arsenal’s in 2021-22. Fifth would be some improvement for a club that finished 12th last term, though the new manager has set the bar at fourth which would mean a return to Champions League. After two games, Chelsea have one point and two goals; Arsenal had nothing of either in 21-22.
Even if sport is life in fast forward, it can be difficult to process how Chelsea have fallen. When Kai Havertz’s goal fetched the Champions League in 2021, they were primed to stay at the top level in Europe. Maybe they would have had Russia not invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Proximity to Kremlin meant Roman Abramovich had to go; the war making England realise that London had become Moscow on Thames. On May 7, 2022, Clearlake Capital paid nearly £2.5 billion to be the new owners. Not that it was cosmos in the time of Abramovich — there were 16 managers in the 18 years he owned the club — but given how things have turned out since, the Russian oligarch’s tenure seems serenely stable. A tenure that fetched two Champions League and five Premier League titles.
Since joining last summer, Sterling has played under four managers including the latest Mauricio Pochettino. Ben Chilwell and Thiago Silva were the only players from the Champions League winning team that started against West Ham on Sunday. Reece James could have been a third but he will, Pochettino has said, need a few weeks to recover from a hamstring injury. Christopher Nkunku’s knee injury during the pre-season tour of USA and Wesley Fofana’s ACL have gone against Pochettino and his new team settling into the season. And after scoring a good goal against West Ham, the promising teenager Carney Chukwuemeka will be out for six weeks having undergone knee surgery.
Too many new players
Yet, it’s not the lack of players that is Chelsea’s problem, it is too many of them being new and young. Chelsea have spent somewhere between £950m (The Swiss Ramble) and £1 billion (TalkSport) on players since the takeover. “I couldn’t sit here if we spent what Chelsea spent in the last two transfer windows — you would kill me,” Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has said.
Twenty-four of the 29 on Chelsea’s roster are less than two years old at Stamford Bridge. There are five teenagers, four of them in midfield including latest signing Romeo Lavia. Most of them are on long-term deals. Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, each costing north of £100m, can stay for nine years. Jackson is on an eight-year contract and both Fofana and Lavia have seven-year deals.
Only three are above 30 and one of them is Romelu Lukaku who is not wanted but has nowhere to go. “The situation was clear before we arrived between the club and the player,” Pochettino has said about Lukaku.
Yet, because Chelsea’s forwards haven’t fired, the goals in Premier League have come from a midfielder and a centre-back, they could still be scouring the market. If Sterling plays No. 10 they could even be looking for a right-winger.
No impact buy
What is hurting Chelsea is that none of the new signings have made an impact. From the bench, Mykhailo Mudryk, the winter window’s megabuck recruit, barely influenced the game against West Ham. He has no goals in 17 games and is on an eight-and-a-half-year deal worth nearly £1oom. “I think he needs to be more desperate to score,” Pochettino has said. Noni Madueke, another January buy, has not played a 90-minute game since joining.
On his debut, Caicedo didn’t set West Ham’s London Stadium alight in the way James Ward-Prowse did for the home team who won 3-1. Even though they played with 10 for over 23 minutes after Nayef Aguerd’s red card. Contrast this with Liverpool adding to their lead against Bournemouth after Alexis Mac Allister’s expulsion in the 58th minute and Arsenal protecting a 1-0 lead against Crystal Palace after Takehiro Tomiyasu was shown the red card in the 67th minute.
Chelsea have been drifting for some time and after his last game in charge Frank Lampard said it like he saw it. “Standards collectively have dropped… a club like Chelsea have to be at a maximum or you won’t compete physically or play at a high level and high speed which is what the Premier League demands,” said Lampard, appointed interim manager in 2022-23.
“If you are not vocal in the dressing room and driving each other on … Any top team has to have that. I could see we didn’t when I came in. A very good manager will help with that but everyone has to take responsibility for that.”
On Tuesday, Danny Mills, the former Manchester City and England defender, told TalkSport: “Chelsea have bought some young players, and if you’re giving them a nine-year contract, all they’ve got to do is say, ‘No I’m going to put my feet up just a little bit, I’ll come off it ten per cent’ and suddenly you’ve no longer got the player you thought you had.”
Chelsea were impressive in spurts against Liverpool (1-1) and West Ham and Pochettino, on a two-year deal, has asked for patience. But it is one thing to rebuild at Spurs, where Pochettino had Harry Kane, and another at a club more used to winning titles than their London neighbours.