Liam Rosenior Thread

[bigbluewillie 1,959]

i'm fed up with all this fucking negativity, let's give the guy a chance, judge him on results and how he handles the players.

Lets judge him on performances and not on what you think he might be.

[Reddish-Blue 2,612]

2 hours ago, bigbluewillie said:

i'm fed up with all this fucking negativity, let's give the guy a chance, judge him on results and how he handles the players.

Lets judge him on performances and not on what you think he might be.

He's got a tricky start to deal with. 
Arsenal cup semi final, Brentford, Pafos, Palace (away), Napoli (away). 

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Liam Rosenior, Chelsea and the benefits and risks of hiring within a multi-club model

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6957165/2026/01/10/liam-rosenior-Chelsea-multi-club-model/

Liam Rosenior begins his Chelsea tenure with an FA Cup tie away at Charlton Athletic this weekend.

If the 41-year-old had any doubts about the scale of the job he’s taking on, it was made clear during Wednesday night’s 2-1 defeat by west London neighbours Fulham at Craven Cottage.

Chelsea’s travelling supporters made their feelings known about the club’s owners, with chants against Clearlake Capital and Behdad Eghbali. A protest has also been organised for Chelsea’s next home match in the Premier League, against Brentford on January 17.

Against that hostile backdrop, it puts the entire BlueCo project and Rosenior, hired from the same position at Chelsea’s French sister club Strasbourg, under even greater scrutiny. But unlike most new head coaches, his transition should not be too stark.

The Athletic spoke to a number of figures within the game for their view on how Rosenior and Chelsea could benefit from hiring within a multi-club organisation.

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“One of the core ideas behind having a multi-club organisation is the efficiencies you can drive from having shared IP (intellectual property) across the group, but also having pathways for talent,” Omar Chaudhuri, chief intelligence officer at sports data firm Twenty First Group, tells The Athletic. “It’s one of the big hypotheses that most of the multi-club groups buy into, although it’s obviously much harder in practice than it is in principle. It’s often very difficult to lift people and put them in new environments, even if you’ve got a plan on paper.

“I suppose the one group that’s done it really well is the Red Bull group, where you’ve got a number of coaches who have coached at multiple Red Bull clubs, either as head coaches or as youth coaches. And what you’ve got there is a very, very clear playing philosophy, which means talent is more transportable across the different organisations. I think the moment you start to not have the philosophy as clearly ingrained, then the benefits begin to diminish a little bit.”

Within that Red Bull multi-club model, players and coaches have routinely moved from one team to another.

That has included current Canada men’s head coach Jesse Marsch, whose previous career took him from head coach of the New York Red Bulls, to assistant coach at RB Leipzig, to head coach of Red Bull Salzburg, to Leipzig head coach (where he struggled) before another tough stint managing Leeds United, which came before Red Bull bought a minority stake in the now Premier League club in 2024. Meanwhile, Marco Rose, who was sacked by Leipzig last year, also previously worked at Salzburg. Gerhard Struber, who is currently head coach of Bristol City in England’s second-tier Championship, previously joined Salzburg from New York Red Bulls.

“One of the most important elements is developing the coaches, because they are the ones in charge of implementing the playing style,” Marsch told ESPN.

Marsch managed New York Red Bulls, Red Bull Salzburg and RB LeipzigStuart Franklin/Getty Images

City Football Group has also tried this approach, albeit with varying degrees of success. The likes of Domenec Torrent, Nick Cushing, Patrick Kisnorbo and Erick Mombaerts have moved between clubs in that stable. Kisnorbo, for example, won the A-League in Australia with Melbourne City, but then had bruising spells in charge of France’s Troyes, winning just three of his 40 matches, which resulted in relegation from Ligue 1, and Yokohama F. Marinos in Japan.

In a previous interview with The Athletic, Des Buckingham, who coached at Melbourne and managed fellow CFG side Mumbai City in India, before winning promotion from League One, England’s third division, with hometown club Oxford United in 2024, said: “We couldn’t play like Man City, but the principles we had were very similar. The idea was that if you were to put the TV on, you’d be able to work out it was a CFG team that was playing.”

Chaudhuri says it was often tricky to predict how well a coach would fare based solely on their previous experience, but a better indicator was analysing the success of their predecessor. He says the most important factor was the existing structure and organisation in place.

“Manchester United is a great example of that in the last 10 years,” Chaudhuri explains. “Every coach that has come in has had a pretty impressive CV, but they’ve all done as badly as the previous guy.

“But at a club like Brentford, for example, where Keith Andrews comes in (as head coach this season), he didn’t have a particularly impressive CV but has done really well because the previous guy (Thomas Frank) had done well. The same with Brighton and Southampton back in the day. We call it organisational intelligence. The best clubs have this kind of intelligence that enables them to succession-plan and have long-term success.

“The predictor of how well Rosenior or anyone else will do in a job when they go in is going to be very much around the environment that they’re stepping into and how well they’re supported.”

Citing the example of Andrews, who currently has Brentford fifth in the Premier League in what is his first crack at management after several jobs as an assistant, Chaudhuri says there could be parallels drawn between his appointment and Rosenior’s up the road at neighbours Chelsea.

“The club knew him (Andrews was previously their set-piece coach) really well, understood how he communicates, how he leads, how he sets up sessions, how he responds to pressure. Therefore, it was less of a risk to put him into a head-coach role when they already knew him,” he says. “And in some respects, having someone within a multi-club group, it’s the same thing, of course, a slightly different environment, different club, but in principle, you’re mitigating a lot of those risks that you just don’t really know about before someone comes through the door.”

Jordan Gardner, an investment strategy consultant at Twenty First Group and former chief executive of Danish club Helsingor, agrees.

“I think it makes a lot of sense, because the whole point of a multi-club model is to capture the synergies between the clubs, so ideally the clubs would be playing a similar style, recruiting the same players, everyone ideally, on a piece of paper, would be on the same page,” he tells The Athletic. “So the idea of bringing a manager from Strasbourg to Chelsea is that, theoretically, there should be no change in continuity. It should be very consistent, rather than bringing in a manager from outside who plays a completely different style.

“You saw what happened with Celtic this season. They brought in a manager (Wilfried Nancy) from MLS, who could not adjust quickly. He couldn’t implement his own style quickly enough, so after a month, he was sacked. So the idea of hiring a manager within an existing multi-club structure is to avoid those challenges.”

Rosenior is familiar with three of Chelsea’s five-person sporting leadership team, having worked with Paul Winstanley and Sam Jewell as a player at Brighton & Hove Albion, and Laurence Stewart in his first full-time management role at Hull City.

He addressed this in a previous interview with The Athletic, when he was still head coach at Strasbourg: “When you meet good people in your football journey, you keep in touch. They told me they were really interested in me coming here. It was a no-brainer to come.”

Rosenior was in charge of Strasbourg for a year and a halfFrederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images

Chelsea have said that the benefits of a multi club structure allow them to test coaches in real conditions, observe them over time and see how they handle pressure. They said it also created alignment on things like style of play and use of data and performance metrics. They pointed out that Rosenior had developed a clear tactical identity and improved young players during his time at Strasbourg, which meant he was deserving of his appointment at Chelsea.

“He already knows the group structure and the upcoming talents at Strasbourg that might be able to one day play at Chelsea, such as Mike Penders,” Simon Van Kerckhoven, founder of Zurafa Football Capital, who advised in CFG’s purchase of Belgian club Lommel in 2020, tells The Athletic.

“You know exactly the personality of the coach, you know his strong and weak points. You know how he treats players, how he faces challenges, how he deals with his staff members, so there are advantages to doing that.

“However, going from Strasbourg to Chelsea is a big step up, with a different level of players. The Premier League is a different type of competition, it’s not just about talent development. Fans are expecting results on a weekly basis, so there’s a lot of pressure there.”

Rosenior made reference to that point himself ahead of the Fulham match on Wednesday, which he watched from the stands, next to Chelsea co-owner Eghbali.

“Chelsea’s built on winning, I’m aware of that, the fans should be proud of the history of this club,” he told Sky Sports. “I want to entertain as well, but the game at this level is about winning.”

Gardner agrees the jump from Strasbourg to Chelsea puts him on another level: “On a piece of paper, and conceptually it makes a lot of sense, but is that actually what’s happening? Is this new manager going to come in and play the exact style, be on the same page and have the right mentality? Is he going to be able to make the jump from Ligue 1 to the pressures of the Premier League? That’s a totally different conversation.”

Elsewhere, a senior figure at a club in the French top flight, who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships, feels the Rosenior hire was a “risky choice” from Chelsea.

“The benefit is that they know him, which in many respects is better than taking a coach who is outside your galaxy,” the senior figure, who worked within a multi-club structure, tells The Athletic. “They have created a relationship with him. But it does surprise me.

“At a big club like Chelsea, he will have to get results quickly, and if he doesn’t, then the management will need to support him significantly against the crowd, who aren’t that positive about the management of the club. On top of that, it has also created instability at Strasbourg.

“I also don’t think Strasbourg are doing that well this season. Last season, they did a good job, even if they overperformed their expected points. I’m not convinced by this season. They started well, but for the last month they haven’t been great. They spent a crazy amount of money in the summer. It’s not like they (Chelsea) are taking a coach that is doing an amazing job. It’s a risk.”

By Tom Burrows

Football News Reporter

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Liam Rosenior insists he will not be a ‘yes man’ at Chelsea

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6957535/2026/01/09/liam-rosenior-Chelsea-charlton/

Liam Rosenior insists he has not been hired as Chelsea’s head coach because he is going to be a ‘yes man’.

Rosenior, 41, was announced as Enzo Maresca’s permanent replacement on Tuesday, having spent the previous 18 months in charge of Strasbourg.

Maresca “parted company” with Chelsea on January 1 after his relationship with the hierarchy had become untenable.

Rosenior knows the structure of Chelsea well, having worked and communicated with the club’s senior figures on a regular basis during his spell in charge of Strasbourg. The Ligue 1 side are also controlled by Chelsea owner BlueCo.

When asked if he will be able to be his own man at Stamford Bridge at a press conference ahead of Chelsea’s FA Cup third-round tie at Charlton Athletic, Rosenior replied: “I don’t think it is possible to ever be in this job and not be your own man. People will see through you straight away.

“I will make the decisions at this football club, that is why I have been brought in. I understand, I am not an alien. I know what is being said. But there is no way you can be successful as a manager if you don’t make the decisions for yourself. The great thing for me is that I have experience of working in the set up. The guys have been nothing but supportive of me in Strasbourg.”

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Rosenior was in the stands at Craven Cottage on Wednesday night as Chelsea fans chanted throughout against BlueCo, co-owner Behdad Eghbali and Clearlake Capital (which holds the majority stake).

Pressed on how he can win them over, he said: “A club of this stature, fans want success and they have every right to want success now. Winning trophies is ingrained in the club’s history, winning titles and Champions Leagues. The fans should have those standards.

“To win over the fans, I need to win over games of football. They need to see a team that represents them. We are trying to build something in a different way. I am very, very confident that in time we will show people why we are doing it this way. My job is to get the team in a place where clubs fear coming to Stamford Bridge and fans really look forward to every game we play.

“When I went to Strasbourg, I was (seen) as a joke. They said my team would finish last and it was an impossible project, that I was a nobody from England. We finished three points off (qualifying for the) Champions League. The outside noise is just noise. I believe very strongly we can be successful here.”

By Simon Johnson

Chelsea Correspondent

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The making of Liam Rosenior, the head coach: ‘He had a light. He was different’

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6942659/2026/01/07/liam-rosenior-Chelsea-profile/

October 2022, the Mercure Hotel at Sheffield Parkway. Hull City are in need of a new head coach to lead their survival fight in the Championship and the search to find Shota Arveladze’s replacement has narrowed.

Consideration has gone to Rob Edwards and others based overseas but it is Liam Rosenior, a young manager without a track record of note, who has piqued interest.

A 60-page document has been submitted to Hull’s recruitment team that includes annotated footage and stills. It is Rosenior outlining the side’s problems and what he considers to be the tactical solutions in forensic detail. A philosophy laid bare.

Phone calls follow before the meeting in South Yorkshire. A 20-minute PowerPoint presentation concludes with Hull officials unanimously sold on handing Rosenior his first permanent managerial position.

“I would always ask players and coaches where they saw themselves in five years,” Tan Kesler, then Hull’s vice-chairman and now the chief executive of Polish club Pogon Szczecin, tells The Athletic. “Liam’s answer was that he wanted to be leading a club that’s playing in the Champions League. Not just the Premier League, the Champions League.”

Rosenior, it turns out, has managed that feat inside four years. The 41-year-old has departed Strasbourg to fill the void left by Enzo Maresca, whose exit from Stamford Bridge was confirmed on New Year’s Day. To write this profile, The Athletic has spoken to people who know or have worked with Rosenior. They have asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships. Unless otherwise stated, information found within this article has been gathered from those conversations.

Rosenior is tasked with reviving Chelsea’s season in an opening month that will include a Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal and more London derbies against Brentford, Crystal Palace and West Ham United. It represents an enormous challenge for a figure with so little experience. There will be plenty holding doubts — but not Rosenior.

“Liam was waiting for this moment,” adds Kesler. “He’s been spending years preparing for this. When we hired him, he had a light. He was different.”

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It is a short road that has led Rosenior to Chelsea, beginning with an interim spell in League One as Derby County head coach in 2022, before time in charge of Hull and Strasbourg, but those close to him have always known the draw of management.

His father, Leroy, says Rosenior targeted becoming a manager before he ever wanted to be a player. He read the FA Coaching Book of Soccer Tactics and Skills as a nine-year-old, as he wrote in the Coaches’ Voice, and took charge of his school football team in Bristol at 11.

An accomplished career as a defender spanning 16 years took Rosenior all the way to the Premier League, but by the time he was featuring in the 2014 FA Cup final with Hull, losing in extra time to Arsenal, the first steps into coaching had already been made.

Rosenior, then in his late twenties, put himself forward to work with Hull’s academy staff, attending under-21s games and watching from the dugout. He would even play an active role in dressing-room discussions, all as he qualified for the first of his coaching badges through Northern Ireland’s Football Association alongside team-mate Tom Huddlestone. A Pro Licence, the highest coaching level, was attained at 32 as he saw out his playing days with Brighton & Hove Albion.

“Liam would be the one reading Pep Guardiola’s book or Jose Mourinho’s, reading anything he could on coaching,” says Curtis Davies, who played alongside Rosenior at Hull before then being coached by his one-time team-mate at Derby County.

“I wouldn’t call him opinionated because he wouldn’t be standing in front of the manager and telling him what to do, but in conversations, he was always saying we might try this or that. He was always thinking about the game.”

Little has changed. Rosenior spent his 18 months as Strasbourg manager living within a mile of the Stade de la Meinau and the club’s adjacent training ground, with assistant Kalifa Cisse as his housemate.

Justin Walker and Ben Warner, his two most trusted allies since becoming a coach at Derby, were picked as neighbours and the quartet would typically spend evenings planning training sessions and scouting opponents. Rosenior went all-in when in Alsace, leaving his family at home in Derbyshire.

Coaching, Rosenior would say, has long been his calling. There was a brief spell working as a pundit with Sky Sports after retiring in 2018, duties he juggled when coaching in Brighton’s youth ranks, but that media position inadvertently set him on this journey towards Chelsea.

Derby’s then-owner, Mel Morris, had enjoyed Rosenior’s insight on TV and subsequently invited him to join Phillip Cocu’s coaching staff in the summer of 2019. It did not work out for Cocu as Derby’s financial problems began to bite, but Rosenior went on to assist Wayne Rooney, who had stepped up as player-manager in the Championship.

Liam Rosenior and Wayne Rooney during their time together at Derby CountyRichard Sellers/PA Images via Getty Images

“Liam is as good a coach as I’ve worked with,” said Rooney on his BBC podcast, the Wayne Rooney Show, this week. “Liam was incredible with his coaching ability.”

“Under Cocu, he would do odd bits but it was the Dutch gang and him,” remembers Davies. “There was one game where we were losing and he nodded for his staff to come and have a chat in the huddle. He started speaking in Dutch and I could see Liam’s face, almost wondering what the point of it was.

“That summed up his role and he got pretty frustrated but once Cocu was gone, there was an opportunity for him. The next season, when we had the points deduction, you saw Liam for how good he was. We were building a team and an identity and Liam ran away with it. We played some unbelievable football. He was meticulous. It was detail, detail. I’m sure Liam and Wayne worked very closely together but the implementation of those ideas was 90 per cent done by Liam.”

During that 2021-22 season, Derby collected 55 points in the Championship under Rooney and Rosenior, but 21 points were deducted for entering administration and breaking the English Football League’s accounting rules, ensuring there was no escape from relegation to League One. It was in the third tier that Rosenior was given the responsibility of leading Derby on a short-term basis following Rooney’s exit.

“Liam had to try to bring a squad together to compete in League One and he was hard done by in not getting the job permanently,” says Davies. “He was in talks for the role but Paul Warne was on the radar. Because of his experience in the league, they jumped in. Liam deserved the opportunity to take that club on after all the work he had put in.”

One door closing on Rosenior, though, would soon lead to a familiar one opening. After five years as a player with Hull, the club his grandmother had actively supported, he returned as manager in the autumn of 2022.

A first season soon dismissed any threat of relegation with a final position of 15th before a second ended with Hull in seventh. That remains the club’s highest standing since being relegated from the Premier League in 2016-17. Throughout, he was hands-on, a coach who led most sessions. A small squad, enabling greater time for individual coaching, was Rosenior’s preference.

“Some coaches have amazing strategies and tactics but they might struggle to communicate the message,” says Kesler. “One of Liam’s great strengths is that ability to simplify things for his players, allowing them to apply it at the highest level.

“He and his staff would spend time on individual improvements but he’s very task-oriented. He won’t spend hours in meetings. He’s very specific, with short meetings to the point. Then they go back on the pitch to create moments for players to showcase their talent.

“They build confidence and then the players come back and ask for more from him. If you’re a younger player, then he’s an opportunity because he doesn’t just constructively criticise you as a coach, he puts you in a position to do what he asks of you in your own creative way. He doesn’t tell you exactly how to do it, he gives you the track for you to speed.”

One of Chelsea’s leading attackers can attest to that. Liam Delap, who had worked with Walker in Derby’s academy, was loaned from Manchester City by Hull in the summer of 2023 and scored eight goals in 31 Championship appearances, reviving a young career that had failed to ignite during temporary spells at Stoke City and Preston North End. Ipswich Town saw enough in Delap’s time with Hull to spend £20million ($27m) to sign him the next season.

“Liam Delap is a good example,” says Kesler. “He came to us and his confidence was shattered. He was doubting his ability but we knew he had the quality. Liam and his staff worked with him one-on-one in meetings to educate him. Liam is a good educator and he’s patient.”

There are recurring themes in appraisals of Rosenior and prominent among them is his work developing young players. As well as Delap, Jaden Philogene (back to Aston Villa) and Jacob Greaves (to Ipswich Town) won Premier League moves after their one full season with Rosenior, while Liverpool’s Fabio Carvalho returned from his Hull loan to join Brentford in a £27.5m move.

Rosenior’s popularity with younger players was clear and had been noted by Strasbourg’s owners, BlueCo.

“He’s approachable and, as a human being, he’s a good person,” says Davies. “That matters because when you compare the time that me and Liam were coming through as players, it’s very different now.

“The way you deal with young players now is to get down on a ground level and speak about the game, the tactics and clips. Liam’s personality leans towards that. Liam has still got that rocket in him but when he goes to ‘volume 10’, it comes across well. You know he means business when he gets to that. It’s a good balance.”

Rosenior has shown other skills as a manager, too. There has been diplomacy when stuck in the middle of fans protesting against Strasbourg’s place in a multi-club ownership structure and a long-standing willingness to tackle racism.

In the days that followed a nomination as the Championship’s manager of the year in April 2024, he was subjected to vile online abuse. “When people are saying it’s a token gesture and things like ‘monkey’ are being written, I have to say something in public,” Rosenior, whose father Leroy was awarded an MBE for tackling discrimination in sport, told BBC Radio Humberside. “It’s water off a duck’s back, but it hurts when my kids are bringing it to me.”

Rosenior held up a banner that read “say no to racism” when winning the following Championship game away to Cardiff City.

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Rosenior will make his Chelsea bow in Saturday’s FA Cup third-round tie against Charlton Athletic — and that will be his first game in English football since taking charge of Hull’s 1-0 loss at Plymouth Argyle in May 2024. That final-day defeat snuffed out any hope of finishing in the Championship’s top six and led Acun Ilicali, Hull’s Turkish owner, to fire his head coach, believing their visions were “not aligned”.

Rosenior was not short of interest before  the 2024-25 campaign. There were talks with Sunderland owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus before Rosenior exited the process, and with Burnley, who opted to appoint Scott Parker.

Instead, it was an offer from figures he knew well that Rosenior grasped.

Chelsea’s co-sporting director, Laurence Stewart, had been Hull’s head of performance analysis when Rosenior joined as a player in 2010, a position he held until leaving for Manchester City in a similar capacity four years later. Rosenior and Stewart were close throughout, spending hours in the director’s analysis room at the club’s training ground.

Paul Winstanley, Chelsea’s other sporting director, had also seen Rosenior’s early coaching work first-hand when head of scouting at Brighton & Hove Albion, along with Sam Jewell, now Chelsea’s director of global recruitment. Strasbourg, owned by Chelsea’s parent company BlueCo, saw Rosenior as a natural fit, capable of developing the youngest squad in Europe’s top five divisions.

And it worked out. Despite back-to-back defeats at the end of the season costing Strasbourg a place in the Champions League, qualification for the Conference League rewarded a campaign that included a 2-1 win at home to Paris Saint-Germain and a 1-1 draw at Marseille, which was attended by Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali.

“There was a meticulous element in his preparation and how he wanted to play,” says Lee Darnbrough, Hull’s former head of recruitment. “He had a way of building up through the phases rather than going direct to the front. There was an insistence on playing from the back to invite teams on.”

And a tactical flexibility.

“There was a game when we played Sunderland away and we didn’t have any fit centre-forwards, so he played with two ‘No 10s’ (attacking midfielders) and two wingers, but his wingers stayed as strikers out wide,” adds Darnbrough. “That game ended 4-4. He found a solution within the squad and it caused the opposition a problem.”

Part of last season’s successful Strasbourg team was Chelsea’s Brazilian midfielder Andrey Santos, who gave a glowing assessment of Rosenior when speaking at a press conference in November. “He’s amazing,” said the former Strasbourg loanee, as reported by the BBC. “I improved a lot with him. Our relationship is perfect.”

Liam Rosenior and Chelsea’s Andrey Santos enjoyed an excellent relationship at StrasbourgSebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images

Centre-back Mamadou Sarr and attacker Emmanuel Emegha are also set to be Chelsea players next season after 18 months working with Rosenior at Strasbourg, with a pathway between the two clubs — uncomfortably for some — all too apparent.

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“He needs support and an environment to build a relationship with the players but when he builds it’s very tight,” says Kesler. “In Chelsea’s situation, Paul is there, Laurence is there, they all know him and have worked with him. He will have this support mechanism around him so it will help him to become successful.”

Rosenior’s inexperience, though, inevitably adds risk to this next step. The scrutiny faced when in charge of Derby, Hull and Strasbourg will markedly intensify at Chelsea, as will the expectations on the back of Maresca’s reign, which included the Club World Cup and Conference League titles last season.

Rosenior is yet to win a major honour, either as player or manager, but makes no secret of his ambitions. In an interview with The Athletic last season, his stated aim was to become England manager. “The longer I’ve worked (as a coach), the more I believe I can get there.”

And here he is at the highest level. Chelsea manager.

“It’s a great opportunity that he’d be silly to turn down,” says Davies, who played in Rosenior’s first game as a manager three and a half years ago. “He’s been striving for this since he was 30 years old and I’m sure he’ll give it all he can. Chelsea are now hiring coaches to play to a style and develop young players and I fully believe Liam can do that.”

By Philip Buckingham

Football Correspondent

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What Liam Rosenior might have learned watching Chelsea from the stands

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6952650/2026/01/08/liam-rosenior-Chelsea-fulham/

Liam Rosenior was back on familiar ground at Craven Cottage on Wednesday.

Yet the former Fulham defender is now heading into uncharted territory, as he prepares to manage in the Premier League for the first time, thrown in at the deep end with a struggling Chelsea.

Rosenior, 41, was confirmed as Chelsea head coach on Tuesday on a contract until 2032, replacing Enzo Maresca, who departed on New Year’s Day.

Watching on from the stands and seated next to co-owner Behdad Eghbali, Chelsea’s disjointed performance showed the scale of the job that awaits him.

This 2-1 defeat means they have now recorded just one win in their past nine Premier League matches. They are now eighth in the table, level on points with Fulham.

In the away section at Craven Cottage, the restless travelling fans turned on their owners, with chants of “F*** off Eghbali” and “We don’t care about Clearlake, they don’t care about us, all we care about is Chelsea FC” audible during the second half. Chelsea fans in the front row of the away end also held up a banner saying “BlueCo Out”.

That puts Rosenior — who joined from BlueCo-owned Strasbourg — under even greater pressure to hit the ground running and win over the sceptical fanbase.

On a tough night for Chelsea, there were some small grounds for optimism, including a first Premier League goal for Liam Delap, who played under Rosenior at Hull City.

However, many of the issues that have plagued them all season — most obviously their disciplinary problems — were clear for Rosenior to see.

Here’s what Rosenior might have learned about the job he’s walking into.

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The fans are not at all happy with the owners

In a Chelsea fan survey this week, 90 per cent of supporters said they did not have confidence in the club’s owners.

That followed Maresca’s exit on New Year’s Day, the fifth head coach to depart since BlueCo, a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, bought Chelsea in 2022.

Against Fulham, Chelsea’s travelling fans made their feelings clear with loud chants against Clearlake and Eghbali, while they also chanted in favour of Roman Abramovich, their previous owner.

With Eghbali singled out in the chants, it must have been an awkward evening for Rosenior, who was sat next to Chelsea’s co-owner during the match. Poking fun at their former player, Fulham’s supporters also chanted “Rozzy, what’s the score?” when they went ahead.

“Chelsea’s built on winning, I’m aware of that, the fans should be proud of the history of this club,” Rosenior told Sky Sports before the game. “I want to entertain as well, but the game at this level is about winning.”

He needs results, and quickly, to win over Chelsea’s supporters.

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Chelsea’s disciplinary issues need resolving

Chelsea’s players argued vociferously about Marc Cucurella’s red cardVince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Images

Chelsea’s ill-discipline has been a big problem again this season, and it was a familiar tale against Fulham.

Marc Cucurella, one of Chelsea’s best performers this season, was sent off 22 minutes into the game after pulling back Harry Wilson when he was the last man.

Chelsea have now been shown five red cards in the Premier League this season — they have only received more (six) in one season, 2007-08 — and seven overall. Some of those have been particularly daft, most notably Delap’s two yellow cards in seven minutes against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Carabao Cup in October.

Following the Cucurella red, three Chelsea players, Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernandez and Tosin Adarabioyo, were booked for dissent.

That means Chelsea have now picked up 47 yellow cards this season, the fourth-worst disciplinary record in the division, behind Tottenham Hotspur, Brighton & Hove Albion and Bournemouth.

“Obviously, there’s been a lot made of the red cards this season,” interim manager Calum McFarlane said in the press conference after the game. “I don’t think this red card is ill-disciplined. The three yellow cards directly after is something we’ll have to look at. I would then argue that they show discipline to not get another yellow card in a tough game with 10 men. So you can look at it either way.”

This is an all-too-familiar problem for Rosenior, as his Strasbourg side had the fourth-worst disciplinary record in France’s Ligue 1, with 34 yellow cards and four reds, behind only Monaco, Toulouse and Lille.

For Chelsea to progress, Rosenior must get a handle on this poor record.

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Chelsea struggle when opponents go direct

The fact Cucurella’s red card was the result of a long ball down the middle of the pitch from Fulham goalkeeper Bernd Leno must have alarmed Rosenior.

In the second half, there was a carbon copy of the same move, when Leno again aimed straight down the middle of the pitch to Wilson, with substitute Jorrel Hato scampering back to avoid further embarrassment.

Much like in the Bournemouth game, Chelsea look vulnerable when opponents play long and direct against them.

In that match on December 30, Andoni Iraola’s side had 14 shots in the first half — the highest number Chelsea have faced in the first half of a home Premier League game on record (from 2003-04), according to Opta.

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Delap’s first league goal could kickstart his Chelsea career

Liam Delap celebrates scoring his first Premier League goal for ChelseaBradley Collyer/PA Images via Getty Images

It has been tough going for Delap since his move to Chelsea in the summer.

Yet the 22-year-old is a player who will have been especially buoyed by Rosenior’s appointment, following their time together at Hull City, where he spent the 2023-24 season on loan from Manchester City.

Tan Kesler, then Hull’s vice-chairman and now the chief executive of Polish club Pogon Szczecin, told The Athletic in an article this week. “He came to us and his confidence was shattered. He was doubting his ability but we knew he had the quality. Liam (Rosenior) and his staff worked with him one-on-one in meetings to educate him. Liam is a good educator and he’s patient.”

Delap impressed after coming off the bench against Manchester City on Sunday, and he followed that up on Wednesday with some impressive hold-up play, as well as his first Premier League goal for Chelsea.

The hope is that Rosenior can help Delap build on this and use it as a springboard to launch his Chelsea career.

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Rosenior’s first game in charge comes when Chelsea face Charlton Athletic at The Valley in an FA Cup tie on Saturday.

He will then lead his new team out for the first time at Stamford Bridge for the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal, before a league match against Brentford three days later.

After Wednesday’s chants from the away end, it is clear he needs a strong start.

For Rosenior, the hard work starts now.

By Tom Burrows

Football News Reporter

[Fulham Broadway 17,552]

Feel sorry for Strasbourg fans.

They must feel like Blueco is like Tesco, and an area manager has just been posted to another branch.

Franchisetastic