The Board

[NikkiCFC 8,286]

On 08/02/2025 at 23:01, milka said:

Out

 

On 08/02/2025 at 23:38, DDA said:

CLEARLAKE OUT!

You guys seem to miss "we are ahead of schedule"

[milka 3,390]

With these clowns we are finished - we are not competitive anymore , top players not want to come , in 3th season we are nowhere near , Clownlake make us laughstock for  everyone , 3th season you can't see any progress in that ''project''  even your manager who is yes man tells you it's not a problem  that we are out of the Cup even is good  tells you everything about the club how is running with these wrongers from USA . There is no pressure from the owners for results because they are not here for that. This is not Chelsea .  

[Vesper 30,085]

The data is clear - Squads with no experience don't win titles

They love data so much, then pay attention to THIS data!

https://siphillipstalkschelsea.substack.com/p/the-data-is-clear-squads-with-no

Having finally watched the entire 90 mins of the Brighton game, I share a lot of the criticisms others have made so well elsewhere.

But the biggest one of all for me was the clear lack of leadership and experience on display. People were blaming each other, waving hands at each other, heads down, no one taking responsibility.

This isn’t Chelsea Football Club, for starters. It’s just not.

And its not what a serious team/squad looks like.

Myself and Simon have been blowing the trumpet for years on the subject of experience, and its more true than ever. So I decided to find actual data which backs up this argument. There’s plenty.

Our “football genius” (according to him) co-owner Behdad Eghbali and his “football genius, best in class” (according to Behdad, them and no one else) Sporting Directors seem to think it is, and in time, they’ll become leaders and come good.

But that’s not how it works.

Young players at big clubs, expected to win now (not Borussia Dortmund, no, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, the clubs Chelsea SHOULD be competing with), gain experience, learn a winning mentality, learn how to deal with set backs, learn how to grow as players, as much from more experienced players as they do from actually playing.

This isn’t just speculation, its a fact. Data shows it. Let me show you.

The average age of Chelsea’s current squad is 23.9.

The average age of a PL winning squad since 1992, is 26.8.

As you can see there’s quite a significant difference there.

The ‘youthful’ Chelsea squad which won the Champions League in 2021 had an an average age of nearly 26. It had Olivier Giroud, N’Golo Kante, Jorginho, Antonio Rudiger and Thiago Silva, all experienced players with leadership qualities.

Below are the average ages of the last 8 PL Champions squads, going back to the last Chelsea PL win in 2016/17. So the last 8 seasons, a pretty good metric.

2023/24: Manchester City: 25.0 years old

2022/23: Manchester City: 27.8 years old (treble winners)

2021/22: Manchester City: 27.0 years old

2020/21: Manchester City: 26.1 years old

2019/20: Liverpool: 26.6 years old

2018/19: Manchester City: 26.4 years old

2017/18: Manchester City: 26.0 years old

2016/17: Chelsea: 27.0 years old

The average age of the Liverpool squad currently topping the league is 26.4. They have some proven elite players and winners with experience and leadership qualities in key positions - Mohammed Salah, Virgil Van Dijk, Allison Becker - alongside a lot of young talent.

Arsenal’s squad, currently 2nd in the Premier League, has an average age of 26.8. Again, there’s a lot of young talent but also more established players. Midfielder Declan Rice is 26 and a leader, centre back Gabriel is 27, goalkeeper David Raya is 29, Jorginho is 33 and Ben White is 27.

Newcastle, in good form and top 4 contenders, have an average age of 27.9, and Nottingham Forest, a good side challenging for top 4, an average age of 26.

That’s all the evidence you should need. In fact its more than enough.

I’d also add all the squads who won PL titles had a healthy mix of youth and experience. They had leaders, winners, proven players, some of who had won things, alongside the young talent they had. None of them were a squad of kids who had played together with no experience or leadership around them for a few years.

Ironically the greatest Chelsea team of all time, 04/05 season, won the league with an average age of 23.9, the same as our squad now.

But there was a HUGE difference.

John Terry and Frank Lampard, for example, had spent 3 years working and playing with Marcel Desailly, Gianfranco Zola, Graeme Le Saux, Jimmy Floyd Hasslebaink, Emmanuel Petit & Frank Lebeouf, and learned from them all. Had freedom to make mistakes. So their development into their prime came with experience around them, and both players still acknowledge the importance of some of those players for their development even now.

Also that Chelsea squad had Claude Makelele, a 31 year old who’d won everything at Real Madrid. Our current squad has no one like this. The only one we had, Thiago Silva, left last summer.

Also back then, football culture was different. Players were men at 23/24. Not to mention Lampard became a first team regular at 17 at WHU, around more experienced players, so had 5 years experience around proven players before he even joined us. JT had been playing for Chelsea for 5 years by 2004 too, around a lot of experienced players.

Likewise the United team who won the double in 1995/96 with “kids” had leaders and winners like Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, Peter Schmeichel, Eric Cantona as experienced players, a young-ish Roy Keane who was a born leader, and even Ryan Giggs had 5-6 years experience at that point. So they had experience, winners and leaders around them.

Basically, recent history especially, but history generally, tells you you need a squad with an average age of 26/27 to win the PL title and do it consistently. The clubs who win the Champions League tend to have a squad who is pretty experienced, and a balance of youth and experience.

There’s also a stat I found from CIES Sports Laboratory, saying that the median age of champions in the five major European leagues in the 2010’s was 26.5 years old.

Even young teams who win things, have had experienced players either in the squad or who have been at the club whilst the young players developed. Proven, experienced, winners, or players who are already the finished article, with leadership qualities.

Liverpool signed James Milner for this reason. They signed finished article players in key positions like Allison and Virgil Van Dijk, their biggest money signings under Klopp, and they completed their team and they won the league.

Jose Mourinho brought back Didier Drogba in the summer of 2014 as a squad player, to provide experience and leadership, and Chelsea won the league.

Behdad and our Sporting Directors, all with zero days experience working at a giant football club prior to 2022, think they know better than all the data I’ve shared above.

They are clearly betting on waiting until our squad gets to 26 years old in 3 years for us to be title contenders and potential CL winners. Even then its a huge risk when they have no experienced players to guide them or support their development. I’m also not quite as sure all of our squad will wait that long.

Also its ridiculously unfair on young players to ask them to carry the team themselves over a whole season. It does them no good at all and you can see how that pressure is telling on them now.

If we signed some proven elite players, finished article players in their prime with leadership qualities, maybe we’d not have to put the weight of carrying our team on inexperienced players. Maybe then we’d be able to rest them or take them out of the team just to take pressure off them, and those players could guide them. This what happens in normal successful teams.

When Eden Hazard joined us in 2012, we still had Lampard, JT, Ivanovic, Cech, Ashley Cole, all there to help him integrate, help him understand club culture, adapt to the PL and take the pressure off him.

Our current squad have no one to help them do this.

Oh, sorry, no, we have Marc Cucurella, who’s never won a club trophy or anything with Chelsea, Reece James, who is injured half the time and isn’t vocal, Trevoh Chalobah, who will be gone in 6 months, and Tosin Adarabioyo, who has, checks notes, never won a major trophy.

That’s not remotely the same.

We have no pure 9, no elite GK, no commanding CB, and arguably no pure 6 despite £1.4 billion spent over 6 windows, and no leaders, no proven winners still in their prime, almost no experience, with tons of players we now need to move on who’ve flopped. According to Behdad Eghbali and themselves, this means our Sporting Directors are world class and doing a great job.

But of course that’s nonsense. This is not a squad set up to win.

Right now we resemble Borussia Dortmund, not Real Madrid or Manchester City. Which is embarrassing.

We’re basically a bunch of kids playing good football together, who get close and may even get CL football, but never seriously compete for the major honours (I mean the Premier League and Champions League trophies).

I don’t know how many more ways I can say this which will be clear:

You cannot create a winning squad without good experience, leaders or winners.

I hope they heard that. I hope that wasn’t discomforting, but its so frustrating this glaringly obvious factor has been actively ignored for over two years.

Behdad Eghbali and the Sporting Directors need to get this concept into their skulls. It’s SO obvious to anyone who remotely follows football and studies successful clubs and teams. If they genuinely don’t see it, quite frankly they shouldn’t be working in football, because everyone else knows this. Like, everyone.

If they, with their combined ZERO experience of winning, or building winning squads, think they know better, all I can do is laugh.

If they think they know better, they should go tell Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho, who helped build multiple title winning and CL winning squads (Jose arguably built the core of our 2012 winning squad too, to be honest). They should ask them what they think of trying to win the big trophies with no leaders, no winners, and no experience. Fergie and Jose especially would literally laugh in their faces.

This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the project by the way. I

In fact, totally the opposite.

I’m happy to have 20/21 young players in the squad to build and develop together long term for sustained success. That’s a GREAT idea. I believe in that.

But you need those 4-5 players between 24-26 who have good experience, are top players, leaders and winners. It literally does almost no damage to the youth-centric approach to do this. One maybe doesn’t even need to be a starter.

The data is in, the evidence is clear, there is literally no debate to be had on this subject.

Keep with the same approach it will take at least 3 years, if you sign a balanced and strong squad (already failed in that regard with £1.4 billion btw), to be title challengers. And there’s no guarantee either, no data to say this approach actually works. It’s taking a massive risk with the clubs money and time.

And if they think players like Cole Palmer are going to be happy to scrap for top 4 for 3-4 more years - maybe getting it, maybe not - before even challenging for the league, potentially winning nothing and stay here, they’re living in cloud cuckoo land. Palmer loves it here and is committed, but top players ultimately want to be challenging for the big honours every season, and playing Champions League comfortably, every single season - and big clubs WILL eventually try for Palmer if we keep on fluttering around the top 4 without certainty and not winning trophies.

I’m really tired of educating alleged, self appointed experts on the literal basics of building a successful squad. This is not rocket science. It doesn’t take any qualifications to know how to do it, just a working knowledge of football and what successful teams and squads are made up of.

Just one look at the data, the average ages of winning teams, tells you all you need to know - and NONE of those squads were 25 young players who all developed together, all of them had proven elite players, leaders and winners in their squad to help the young players develop.

The owners love data, maybe they should look at the data, the history, which supports their approach. The fact is there is none. You can’t measure intangibles like good experience, leadership directly, individually on a spreadsheet, but the eye test (and even some data) shows these things actually matter. Behdad and the sporting directors are the only people who seem to disagree.

Let this silly baseless idea go, and sign some proven, elite players, leaders, winners, in key positions.

It’s not rocket science, it’s obvious.

The Score

[Vesper 30,085]

Sacking another manager will not change a thing

Changing the manager will achieve nothing and ignores the real problems

https://siphillipstalkschelsea.substack.com/p/sacking-another-manager-will-not

I’ll be honest, when I looked at the Brighton result and saw the reaction, I realised I barely have any emotional energy left for football. This club and how it’s being run, and the constant scapegoating of the manager when the real problems come above him, its sucking all my enthusiasm for football out of me.

I’ve been through this all before and I really cannot be bothered to have the same conversations three years in a row. Maybe the owners who read this should start taking fans views seriously, instead of congratulating themselves on what is actually failure or spinning failure as success.

Sadly, its also clear to me now at least some of our fans may never have the patience for a long term manager, because one bad run of form for any manager, and we tear him apart, bring him down & hound him out. We were indoctrinated to do this under Roman Abramovich and can’t get our heads around how football has changed.

Between the start 2010/11 season and the end of 2021/2022, all under Roman’s ownership we challenged for the title 4 times in 12 seasons and missed out on CL football twice. We finished over 30 points behind the PL champions in the last 5 years of Roman’s ownership as well as the first 2 of the new ownership. This decline has been coming. The new owners I thought would change this, so far they’ve merely continued as a side which battles for top 4, with two cup runs and one lost final.

The manager is not the most important issue right now. This magic bullet theory about managers has been proven false.

You only have to look at the most successful clubs right now - Manchester City, Liverpool, even Real Madrid, all have built success with stability at management level. Arsenal’s best team in years has appeared doing the same thing.

Fact is, in today’s game, you can’t build sustainable long term success or attract top players to your project without stability at manager level. Our fans need to get this into our heads, and fast.

Nothing much will change if the manager changes right now.

The biggest, most fundamental issues at our club right now are Clearlake Capital, the Sporting Directors and GK guru Ben Roberts.

I’ve talked about why this is so many times I’ve lost count, and I can’t deal with anyone thinking they’re doing a good job. Look at our recent form. Look at our squad with its lack of depth so our first XI have become burned out. Look at the lack of leaders, an elite core and good experience to help our young stars. Look at the abysmal treatment of players and total waste of money in the transfer market.

Anyone can see it.

Every Chelsea fan I know, without fail, is angry right now and we have a right to be.

The recent results show the squad building has been absolutely horrific and Enzo Maresca, like his predecessor Mauricio Pochettino, has been let down in the transfer market when he asked for a proven elite striker. Its impossible to judge a head coach when they aren’t given the tools they ask for to do their job.

If we had a top GK, a proven elite 9 (who our last TWO managers have asked for and not been given), and quality depth in midfield, and Trev had been kept in the summer, I think we’d be in a better position now, regardless of who the coach is.

And of course, if we signed 4-5 grown adults who have won trophies, are proven at elite level, with leadership qualities and good experience, as well some prime years ahead, we definitely wouldn’t be. But the self professed geniuses in charge, think that experience is bad despite EVERY successful title winning squad in PL history having a blend of both youth and experience.

The “youth only” plan is not the plan these owners - or rather Todd Boehly - had in mind when they came here. PART of Todd Boehly’s plan was to sign a lot of elite young talent from all over the world, as we have. I still believe in that aspect of the project, I’ve not lost faith in that.

But as myself and Simon have advocated for years on this site, Todd also wants some experience and proven players alongside that & is willing to be flexible to achieve it. He wants best in class people running the club and his main goal is to win. He knows how to win in sports ownership, and how to build relationships with fans and players and respect the culture of the club.

Clearlake had no experience in sport ownership before this and have skewed the project in favour of kids only, with no good experience. Its absolutely ridiculous.

Right now, we’re not on course to win the biggest trophies. And in my view we’re not going to win those trophies again without a change right at the top of the club.

Another reason not to sack Maresca, is that no serious manager will get considered for or take our job right now, because they never get backed by the SD's, have no say on transfers or squad building whatsoever, and have to pick the GK Ben Roberts wants. It’ll be the same “project manager” who’ll follow orders. Nothing will change.

The biggest tell is we won’t dare hire a truly elite manager like Klopp, Pep, Tuchel, Carlo or someone of that level because the self professed geniuses running our club think they know more than all of them and want someone who they can control, rather than listen to and trust people at the absolute top of the game. If that doesn't tell you the manager ain't the problem, I don't know what does.

We’re currently on course to become a top 6 side who occasionally gets CL football , and whose best players get pinched by the real elite sides every few years and win a few cups, with a few easier European trophies. Basically Arsenal 10 years ago.

That’s embarrassing.

We’re Chelsea Football Club, not Borussia Chelsea.

Regardless of the owner's ambitions - and I know they are bigger than top 6 - that’s where we are right now. And that’s NOT where Chelsea should be. We’re not a feeder club for other big clubs, it's absolutely shameful we’re in this position where people are even considering this might happen.

I also don’t want to hear the excuse of our current league placing, because these issues will remain regardless of where we finish this season. If we succeed its down to Enzo getting the most out of this squad despite these issues, not due to the genius of the Sporting Directors.

There’s no external saviour coming. Roman Abramovich is not coming back no matter how many ask for it, and his way of running a football club belongs in the past anyhow.

The only way we can get real change now is Todd Boehly buying out Clearlake Capital, and even then, it's only faint hope.

Yes. Todd’s links to that ticketing firm aren’t ideal, but if you think the timing of that leak, coming at a time Clearlake is heavily under fire, was a coincidence, I think you’re being very naive.

Todd is the best man for the job. He’s a born winner, has a track record of winning, his first goal is to win, he has a long term perspective, he respects fans and our views & he understands what it takes to win and what type of characters you need to do it. And he has an emotional attachment to the club.

---

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Todd, if you're reading, we need you right now. Don’t give up on Chelsea, many many Chelsea fans would happily see you replace Clearlake and that only increases with every defeat.

I for one am sick and tired of the same story two years in a row now. About this time every season we have a bad run and everyone wants the manager out, manager changes, nothing actually changes. And the people really responsible blame everyone else for their failures, the fans lap it up and think its all new and “this time” it will work out, when they real culprits face no accountability and are allowed to keep on making their mistakes & even pat themselves on the back for it. Because they appear to care more about their CVs than what's good for Chelsea FC.

I’m tired of us fans fighting amongst ourselves (including me at times), about managers or players, when it’s clear who we should be calling out and directing this anger towards first.

If necessary, and I hope its not, we should be (peacefully) protesting. Quite frankly, the people at the top need to realise how strong the depth of feeling is amongst fans, and its increasingly they won’t listen to us on socials, you could easily make an argument they don’t care about our views.

The real problem at Chelsea is obvious and something has to be done. It’s heartbreaking to see us in this situation for a third year running and I’m just tired of excuses.

We need to forget about judging the manager for now and focus on the real problem, the people above him who built this squad he has to coach.

Clearlake and the SD’s need to sort it out, make the decisions necessary, show some ambition and start being not just competent, but exceptional.

If not, they should leave for someone who’ll do a better job. Then we can have a conversation about the manager.

The Score

[TheHulk 2,401]

What a sad state of affairs this club is in, Maresca hiding behind the owners incompetence for being a mediocre manager and the owners hiding behind Maresca making him take the blame when the squad assembled is shambles. As for the fans, forced to pick a side when both going nowhere.

Edited February 10 by TheHulk

[MoroccanBlue 5,375]

Mate of mine said this to me and I can't help but feel he is 100% spot on. 

Had Boehly had any influence Olise and Kharavaskelia would be our wingers right now with Palmer. 

[Special Juan 28,091]

I don't follow anyone, not Maresca or the owners, the club is rotten from top to bottom and they need calling out

[milka 3,390]

Quote

Maresca: “The target with the club was to play Champions League in 2 years, not in 1 year”. “Don't forget that in the last two years, Chelsea have never been in the top four. We're in the right direction. We'll try our best to bring this club where it belongs”.

And what is the reason that the team has not been in the Champions League for the last two years, because the team was a regular participant there until 2022 and the arrival of the Blue Co who gutted our CL winning team without sporting reason this guy is so  yes man  after one billion spend   with proper management we would have a galaxy team, but instead we hear excuses about how the team is not ready
What needs to happen for the team to be ready? Judging by the kids who keep signing up, the team won't be ready anytime soon. The goal is trophies, not just to qualify somewhere like Arsenal the bottlers .

[TheHulk 2,401]

 

[DDA 9,924]

[Blue Armour 4,436]

Sabotage from all corners since the beginning.

The funds from Abramovich's club sale are still lying frozen without anything being handed out to war victims.

Edited February 16 by Blue Armour

[milka 3,390]

Fuck the English Goverment who let this happen taking  us our elite goat Don Roman the best owner who loved the club and giving everything to be successful and who dont care about the money when you are successful you will get your money back and give us these elite Clowns from NFL  who love playing 443 . People start to wake up after 3years of the Clownlake smoke but it's too late the damade it's done we are too much in the shit . When you sack your elite gaffer Tommy T and get Potter  it's the first red flag .

Edited February 17 by milka