The Board

[robsblubot 3,498]

1 hour ago, milka said:

What these clowns doing  at the dressing room  after  every game?  They talk how good we are after win with the squad ,or instruct system 443 ? No we are not we are still pathetic at 11th place nowhere near to compete for anything .

https://www.football365.com/news/todd-boehly-sacked-tuchel-ex-Chelsea-boss-denied-children-half-time-dressing-room

 

Imagine the amount of 🙄 from the players.

And folks want us to hire a top manager. 😆

[ZAPHOD2319 4,476]

This has always been a non story from the media for me. Roman went in the locker room when he was in London after both wins and loses. The players said after loses he wouldn’t speak to them, he just glared.

[Fulham Broadway 16,827]

FANS GETTING PROGRESSIVELY FUCKED OFF WITH CLOWNLAKE

 

Chelsea are facing more supporter dissent after being warned that a slide towards “irreversible toxicity” in the stands is likely to end in protests against the ownership.

In a letter sent to Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali this month, the Chelsea Supporters’ Trust cited concerns about higher ticket prices, the cost of merchandise and travel to games, and a lack of communication from the board. The CST, which said Chelsea had “become a laughing stock on and off the pitch” since being bought by Boehly and Clearlake Capital in 2022, pointed to anger and frustration over a sense that supporters are being used to raise revenue streams.

The low mood has been reflected at recent games. Raheem Sterling was booed after struggling during Chelsea’s win over Leicester City in the FA Cup last Sunday. Mauricio Pochettino, the head coach, and Boehly, the controlling co-owner, were abused during the recent 2-2 draw away to Brentford.

“The current feeling amongst Chelsea supporters in our opinion is at its lowest since the early 1980s,” the CST said. “While this may be expected with our current run of form and position in the league table, a significant number of supporters that we speak to are quick to express concerns that the lack of any public-facing vision from the new ownership has led to an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

“Supporters are saying that there currently seems a fast-growing lack of trust from much of the fanbase, especially matchgoers towards the board, partially due to severely limited communication. Many supporters have significant concerns about the future of our club.

“The views of a quiet few became a vocal expression of a larger number of Chelsea supporters present at the [Brentford] game. Much of our recent dialogue with supporters reveals a lack of belief in the decision-makers at the top of our club. The current mood amongst supporters is critically low and cannot be ignored. The feeling that the club has become a ‘laughing stock’, both on and off the pitch, is growing.

“The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust regretfully believes that we are close to, if not already experiencing, a significant shift in supporter opinion that could result in irreversible toxicity, almost irrespective of results on the pitch. Unless the situation improves, this seems likely to manifest itself in more targeted chanting, especially at televised games, and quite possibly more organised, overt, and impactful forms of protest by some sections of the fanbase.”

The Trust said the owners had communicated after their takeover that they would explore every commercial avenue possible in an attempt to bring Chelsea’s income in line with other major Premier League clubs and that charging supporters more would be done as a last resort.

It claimed this pledge had been broken by a number of price increases and budget cuts. Examples cited included prices for coaches to away games increasing by £53, replica kits by £5, tickets to cup games by £1-£13, programmes by 50p, youth fixtures by £2, women’s matches by “record amounts”, and food and drink in general admission areas by 5-15%.

It remains to be seen whether Chelsea raise season ticket prices this summer. “The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust acknowledges you are seeking to optimise income, but we have significant concerns regarding ticket pricing going forward,” the CST said. It said many fans were “fearful that they will be priced out of watching the club they love by above-inflation increases”.

Complaints over a lack of engagement with fans centred around silence from Chelsea, who are 11th in the league despite spending more than £1bn on signings in the past two years, over their stadium redevelopment plans.

Chris Jurasek, Chelsea’s chief executive, responded to the CST on 20 March. “We deeply value the dedication, commitment and desire from all our supporters to continue to develop Chelsea FC into the most successful and admired club in the world, both on and off the pitch,” he said. “Part of achieving that goal will be done by working with our supporters. We want to ensure we engage with our supporters regularly to provide them with clear lines of communication.

“With the establishment of the Fan Advisory Board, who liaise with the Club on a regular basis, we are confident that there is a great deal of shared discussion and an intention to work closely with a number of key stakeholders.

“Our goal is the same as your goal: to ensure Chelsea Football Club has a bright and successful future. To do so, there is a necessity to increase club revenue to put us on a par with our rivals and allow us to compete in both the Premier League and Women’s Super League, as well as in domestic and European competitions. There are several ways we are already doing that and will further explore.

“We recognise there is a concern about rising costs on a matchday and the impact ticket prices can have on our supporters. Rest assured, we are taking frequent advice and engaging in regular consultation with the Fan Advisory Board to ensure that we take a holistic approach in this vitally important issue.”

Mark Meehan, the chair of the CST, criticised Jurasek for failing to respond to concerns raised in the original letter. “We are supporters, not customers,” Meehan said.

Guardian

[bluesman2610 1,341]

Man I remember towards the end before the forced sale how many people had issues with the previous board too. It's funny how life works I guess. While I will thank Roman for everything he did over his 19 year stint I'm also pretty pissed that he has left us in a situation where we could be expelled from PL because of how he ran the club.

[TheHulk 1,855]

Put them all over the stadium.

[Tomo 21,733]

9 hours ago, TheHulk said:

Put them all over the stadium.

So this sticker was planted inside the stadium by someone who was in there due to paying those same people on the poster a kings ransom for a ticket, most probably added to their coffers with some half time beers/food and very possibly went to the megastore before/after the game to give them even more money.

That'll show em!

[bluesman2610 1,341]

Since the other story from CST was posted figured we should hear what the FAB had to say

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13235283/Chelsea-Fan-Advisory-Board-Supporters-Trust-Todd-Boehly.html

 

It's funny that the Chairman of the CST is on the FAB and knows they have things in the works about ticket prices yet still put out the original statement knowing what it would do to the fan base.

Edited March 25 by bluesman2610

[Vesper 28,765]

Fans turn on Chelsea owners and make it clear that they “never will be” welcomed

https://www.caughtoffside.com/2024/03/27/Chelsea/

Chelsea owner Todd Boehly has been a fan of the multi-club ownership model ever since acquiring the West London club but it looks like it is blowing up in his face.

BlueCo bought a majority stake last summer in Ligue 1 side Strasbourg to kick-start their multi-club project but the fans of the French outfit have never accepted the Chelsea owners.

There was resentment toward the idea from the start and it has just got worse amid poor results, criticism of their youth-first transfer strategy and fury among fans about a lack of communication from the owners

There will be a protest march before Strasbourg’s game against Rennes on Sunday and the Ligue 1 club’s largest fan group, Ultra Boys 90, have said that BlueCo “aren’t welcome and never will be”.

The group have also released a statement this month regarding their new owners, in which they said via The Standard: “Racing is now nothing more than a financial asset, owned by an investment fund that already owns another club.

“Multi-club is killing football, and we’ll fight it!”

Chelsea and others should be stopped from owning multiple clubs 

Strasbourg are currently just four points above the relegation zone in Ligue 1 and face a battle to avoid dropping down to Ligue 2 throughout the rest of the campaign.

Multi-club ownership should be banned in football as all it does is make the big clubs stronger while destroying the progression of the club being bought.

For example, Strasbourg can’t grow and challenge for titles in France when their purpose now is to serve Chelsea. The same goes for Red Bull and the City Group.

The concept is very unfair on the fans of the club being bought and it is one of many things wrong with modern football.

[milka 3,344]

It's clear

 

Edited March 28 by milka

[calculatingInfinity 1,443]

It's almost impressive how quickly American owners can destroy a club

 

 

[Fernando 6,451]

Yes noobster. 

Well the only bad part is that we will need to stay with them for a minimum of 10 years. 

[Blue Armour 4,278]

2 hours ago, calculatingInfinity said:

It's almost impressive how quickly American owners can destroy a club

 

 

In other words..Clownlake's got to sell, sell, sell, this coming window.

They are likely going to bank on any homegrown talent for this, and this could include players like Gallagher & Hutchinson, because, unlike last year, there are very few proven top 4 level players left in the squad.

Absolute shambles.

 

[ZAPHOD2319 4,476]

PR stunt

 

 

[Blue Armour 4,278]

On 28/03/2024 at 21:49, ZAPHOD2319 said:

PR stunt

 

 

Figurehead is the right word. Because that's all Boehly was. Just the face for the media to beat up in public.

The real masterminds are Eghbali, and that bloodhound Wyss. They are behind the youth revolution and mass reductions of the wage bill. Boehly was responsible for experienced big-wage signings like Sterling and Koulibaly.

At least most of Boehly's mistakes could be cleared through transfer sales.

[OneMoSalah 8,774]

On 28/03/2024 at 16:19, ZAPHOD2319 said:

PR stunt

 

 

Not a new figurehead we are needing, it is new OWNERS

[Vesper 28,765]

19 hours ago, OneMoSalah said:

Not a new figurehead we are needing, it is new OWNERS

yes, I feel like we are simply an investment firm playtoy

[King Kante 1,474]

You know Clownlake are absolutely twitching like a crackhead wanting to raise ticket prices massively but holding back as they know they can not do so before European competition has been secured. 

[Vesper 28,765]

The Chelsea ‘project’ is a mess, confused and drifting. This is not how to build a club

https://theathletic.com/5400398/2024/04/09/Chelsea-pochettino-boehly-clearlake-project/

The scoreboard said almost three minutes of stoppage time had been played when Sheffield United’s Oli McBurnie smashed the ball into Chelsea’s net on Sunday evening.

But that wasn’t strictly true. Since the game at Bramall Lane ticked into overtime, the ball had been in play for precisely 28 seconds. Until McBurnie scored, stoppage time had been a non-event.

The first passage of play consisted of Axel Disasi sending an aimless free kick into opposition territory, where an abject game of head tennis ensued — Sheffield United winning five headers, Chelsea one — before Enzo Fernandez fouled Gustavo Hamer.

Another minute passed without the ball in play. Chelsea coach Mauricio Pochettino made a double substitution, replacing Marc Cucurella and Nicolas Jackson with Benoit Badiashile and Cesare Casadei. It was textbook stuff: eat up some more time and get some more height on the pitch, given that an aerial onslaught was the opposition’s only real hope of forcing an equaliser.

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Ivo Grbic went short with the free kick and then Jayden Bogle went long. Badiashile challenged McBurnie for the ball, the pair of them at full stretch, but they both missed it. Vinicius Souza retrieved it from the byline, given a little too much time by Casadei. By the time Moises Caicedo and Carney Chukwuemeka had woken up to the sight of James McAtee in space, Oliver Arblaster was free behind him.

Arblaster clipped the ball into the danger area, but Fernandez got his head to the cross and, with that, Chelsea’s players seemed to relax.

There was another header to be won on the edge of the penalty area. Mykhailo Mudryk, another Chelsea substitute, seemed to be the favourite to win it against Hamer, the smallest player on the pitch — but while Hamer leapt with all the power he could muster, Mudryk barely got off the ground. Hamer won the challenge and suddenly the ball was travelling back into the Chelsea penalty area.

There were seven Chelsea outfield players between the penalty spot and the 18-yard line. If you were looking at it from above, you would say they were well-positioned — but they were also, almost without exception, flat-footed, ball-watching or both. Sheffield United’s Cameron Archer won the second ball; Trevoh Chalobah got closest to him but, like Mudryk, didn’t really get off the ground. McBurnie was already anticipating the flick-on. Badiashile, crucially, was not.

It was a terrible goal to concede at any time, never mind in stoppage time. The defending wasn’t quite as egregious as Manchester United’s when Chelsea scored a 111th-minute winner at Stamford Bridge on Thursday night, but it carried the same traits: lack of composure, lack of endeavour, lack of responsibility, lack of awareness, lack of fight.

Eight days earlier, Chelsea had contrived to surrender a winning position at home to struggling Burnley, who played the majority of the game with 10 men. After that match, Pochettino pointed to his heart and his head and said his team’s problems lay “here” and “here” — “the capacity, the energy, the hunger that is the minimum to compete in the Premier League”.

It was a sweeping, rudimentary diagnosis, the type that is very easy for a coach to offer when wishing to create lines of separation between himself and his team’s failings. But… he’s right, isn’t he? This is a group of players who, with Cole Palmer a very notable exception, have looked happy to go through the motions in the Premier League, performing when the conditions are favourable and the wind is in their sails but showing a distinct lack of fight on so many occasions when they have been required to dig deeper.

It is a coach’s job to instil those qualities in a team. For all the obvious technical and tactical advances made by Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal under Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta, those teams are underpinned by desire and a collective sense of purpose.

But those teams were also built with a clear vision in mind, rather than the type of reckless, unbridled, scattergun spending sprees that characterised Chelsea’s first three transfer windows under a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital.

GO DEEPER

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Even now, it is worth remembering that Chelsea’s transfer outlay in their first year under these owners was the biggest in the history of the game: £70million ($89m) on Wesley Fofana, £33m on Kalidou Koulibaly, £47.5m on Raheem Sterling, £63m on Cucurella, an initial £62m (potentially rising to £88.5m) for Mudryk, £33m on Badiashile, £29m on Noni Madueke and £106m on Fernandez, to cite just eight of the players they signed.

They followed that last summer by spending £115m on Moises Caicedo, £53m on Romeo Lavia, £52m on Christopher Nkunku, £25m on Robert Sanchez, £38.8m on Disasi, £23m on Lesley Ugochukwu, £32m on Nicolas Jackson and — in the final hours before the transfer deadline — a seriously overdue coup with the inspired acquisition of Palmer from Manchester City for £40m.

It all looked wild at the time. It looks even worse now with Chelsea sitting ninth in the Premier League — far closer, in points terms, to the relegation zone than the top three. Since the start of last season, they have won as many points as Brentford and three fewer than Fulham.

They are top of one table, however. On Friday afternoon, when the Football Association published its breakdown of intermediary payments by clubs over the past two transfer windows, Chelsea were shown to have paid an extraordinary total of £75,140,524 — almost £15million more than the next club, Manchester City, and more than double the sum paid by any other English club.

That reflects a huge number of outgoing transfers as well as incoming deals and new contracts for Thiago Silva and Fernandez, among others. But again the sums involved are enormous. The gains? Less so.

There are obvious attractions to a recruitment strategy that is based around young talent, but almost everything Chelsea have done has looked flawed. They had already signed four central midfielders between the ages of 19 and 22 (Fernandez, Ugochukwu, Casadei, Andrey Santos) before they broke the British transfer record to sign a fifth (Caicedo) in August and then, seemingly in a fit of pique, added a sixth (Lavia).

Talented players, all of them, but what is the vision here? What is the pathway for Lavia, Ugochukwu, Casadei and Santos? How many of these players are going to make the grade at Chelsea?

GO DEEPER

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And if the whole thing is based around resale value, then a serious question: how many of Chelsea’s signings have performed in a way that would enable the club, hypothetically, to sell them at a profit? Palmer certainly, Jackson probably, Gusto possibly, but many others would not. Even some of those players that looked like clever, low-risk, (relatively) low-cost investments now appear to be diminishing rather than flourishing assets.

All of this would be more easily glossed over if Chelsea were performing well on the pitch, but it has felt as if every step back forward has been swiftly followed by another step back. The injuries suffered by Reece James, Fofana, Nkunku and others offer a degree of mitigation, but it falls a long way short of excusing underperformance on this scale.

It is worth acknowledging they are scoring more goals and winning more games than last season. In terms of attacking play, their expected goals (xG) numbers are better (up from 1.34 per game to a much healthier 2.08 per game). Subjectively, it seems fair to say their best performances this term (the 4-4 and 1-1 draws with Manchester City, the 3-1 win at Aston Villa in the FA Cup) have been more energetic, more fluent and more incisive than anything they produced in the second half of last season under Graham Potter or Frank Lampard. But even Pochettino is not pretending it is good enough; having spent much of the campaign in trust-the-process mode, he has now begun to hint publicly at flaws in the dysfunctional project he has taken on.

GO DEEPER

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“It’s about being able to compete,” Pochettino said in his post-match press conference on Sunday. “For different reasons, we struggle to compete in these types of games. Maybe I repeat too much, but watching football like us, at 52 years old, you identify really quickly if the team is ready to compete or not. Maybe this group still is not mature enough to compete in every single game every three days.”

The problem is that Chelsea’s lack of maturity is evident in almost every game. Their seven-match unbeaten run in the Premier League is their best since late 2021, but the draws with Burnley and Sheffield United were defined by frailties, as was the victory over Manchester United for long periods. Likewise the wins against Leeds United and Leicester City in the FA Cup. In arguably the best period of their season, with an FA Cup semi-final on the horizon and a top-six finish not out of the question, Pochettino sounds less convinced by the group of players he is working with.

It has been intriguing to hear him express concerns about players living in a “comfort zone”. Lampard spoke in similar terms during his brief spell as interim coach at the end of last season. It is almost as if signing more young, unproven players than a manager knows what to do with — giving some of them seven-year or eight-year contracts — is a recipe for confusion and complacency rather than a stroke of genius.

The whole thing looks so confused. Why did they sign Badiashile in January last year when they already had a highly promising left-sided central defender, Levi Colwill, earning rave reviews on loan at Brighton & Hove Albion? Why did they sign Ugochukwu last summer when they already had Fernandez, Casadei and Santos and were about to sign Caicedo and Lavia (to say nothing of Conor Gallagher, whom they were determined to sell but who ended up staying and starting almost every game)? Why loan out Lewis Hall and Ian Maatsen when left-back remains a problem? To what extent were the deals for Mudryk and Lavia in particular driven by FOMO? How many “project” players does it take before a wider “project” is undermined?

Quite apart from the defending for Sheffield United’s equaliser on Sunday, there was something insipid about the way Chelsea attacked at 2-1 up. Time and again there were poor decisions or poor execution: Jackson setting off too early and running into an offside position on 77 minutes (and Fernandez overhitting the pass in any case); Jackson running straight into a defender when he and Chukwuemeka had the chance of an overload on 79 minutes; Chukwuemeka misplacing a basic pass to Madueke on the right-hand side on 81 minutes. The only pass Mudryk completed, as an 82nd-minute substitute, was from the kick-off after McBurnie’s goal.

It is a young team: Badiashile is 23, Malo Gusto 20, Fernandez 23, Caicedo 22, Chukwuemeka 20, Madueke 22, Mudryk 23, Jackson 22 and so on. So many of these players have the capacity to improve — but how many of them look substantially better prospects for the time they have spent at Chelsea? Gusto, arguably. Jackson perhaps, given he has scored nine Premier League goals. The qualities of Fernandez and Caicedo are obvious, but it is hard to go overboard about their impact when a sense of control in midfield is so often elusive.

There has been talk of both Arsenal and Liverpool having “dodged a bullet” when Chelsea blew them out of the water in the pursuit of Mudryk and Caicedo respectively. But that is nonsense. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which Mudryk would have made the same kind of impact at Arsenal as Leandro Trossard has. Likewise, it is easy to imagine Caicedo would have thrived in Liverpool’s midfield, resuming his Brighton partnership with Alexis Mac Allister.

At the same time, it is notable how many recent players who have left Chelsea over the past few years are thriving elsewhere: Jorginho and Kai Havertz at Arsenal, Marc Guehi at Crystal Palace, Antonio Rudiger at Real Madrid, Fikayo Tomori, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Christian Pulisic at AC Milan. Mateo Kovacic hasn’t quite had the same impact at Manchester City and Mason Mount has experienced a wretched time with injuries at Manchester United, but the overall picture invites further questions about Chelsea’s strategy both before and particularly since the Boehly-Clearlake takeover.

Even Pochettino’s fiercest critic might concede that, for all the talent and potential in this squad, there is also a distinct shortage of players with the right combination of hunger and know-how. Yes, Fernandez was a World Cup winner at 21, but that was an experienced Argentina team full of battle-hardened competitors. At Chelsea, he and Caicedo are expected to be leaders at an age when they are still trying to find their way in an unfamiliar, unsettled environment.

It is legitimate to wonder whether Pochettino has what it takes to unlock the potential in this squad but the more you look at Chelsea, the more it becomes apparent this malaise goes far deeper than the manager and far, far deeper than his tactics or team selection on any given matchday.

It is only a few weeks since he was barracked with chants of, “You don’t know what you’re doing” for replacing Mudryk with Chukwuemeka at 2-2 against Leicester in the FA Cup. Quite apart from the vindication that followed when Chukwuemeka scored, the cold, hard reality is that Mudryk, like others, has done nothing like enough at Chelsea to become a cause celebre or a stick with which to beat another unloved coach. It sometimes looks like one of those squads where there are no right answers, only wrong ones.

There is always an assumption that young players and young teams will get better: another year older, another year wiser. But football rarely works like that. If individual and collective development was linear, the past two seasons would have gone an awful lot more smoothly for Chelsea. And while there is always the temptation to blame the coach for all of a team’s ills, surely the miserable 12 months that have passed since Potter’s dismissal, seven months into a five-year contract, should dissuade people from the assumption that another change of manager is all that is needed here.

The whole thing is a mess but it requires patience. Not because there is any certainty that patience will pay off, but because, having spent such a huge amount of money in such an extreme manner, Chelsea’s decision-makers have left themselves with little choice — either financially or strategically — but to hope that these players come good.

The past few weeks alone have given a few Palmer-inspired glimpses of how things could be, along with a few brutal reminders of how things are. Nearly two years into the Boehly-Clearlake era, the wild, overexcited zeal that launched that regime seems to have given way to an uncomfortable state of drift and a desperate hope that lessons are learned, pennies start to drop and that somehow, from out of the chaos of the past couple of years, a serious football team emerges.

GO DEEPER

Chelsea may have spent £1bn - but how much of that have they seen on the pitch?

Edited April 13 by Vesper