Luiz4Chelsea

...and have the most luscious hair in a summer breeze. No one can claim that us & Tuchel enjoyed a purple patch when he was sacked, and one can only guess how things would have turned out. But with their comprehensive incompetence, the owners have inadvertently knighted Tuchel. Even if Potter is being sacked, until the owners have understood what it takes for a club to compete at the highest level, he may well be the last top manager and proper Chels we have seen in a long time.

I wouldn't even consider this question before we have a sustainable coaching solution. Very unpopular opinion right now but I'm not willing to draw any conclusion on Havertz under the Potter regime. He is looking particularly bad, but as a young center forward, the complete lack of structure and confidence in the team is hitting him particularly hard. He is young and yet I saw a lot of promising signs during his partnership with Werner. Can we rule out that under the right manager, Havertz and Nkunku could form a productive partnership? Another massive advantage of getting in a new coach now would be to get a more accurate picture of our current squad's potential before the summer. Based on right now, we might as well sell every single player. We may well conclude that Havertz isn't cutting it (at least in that role) and that we should buy a new striker, but there's no point thinking about that now. Getting the right manager must be our number 1, 2 and 3 concern, everything else follows.

It was indeed far easier for Tuchel. During his time most of the players were playing very well, and won the majority of the matches. For Potter it is much more difficult now, since all the players are playing very badly and the team is losing every game.

These stories are indeed unconfirmed and absurd. But regardless of whether these specific tales are true or not, we know from the owner's own statement that absurd stuff like this has happened at the start of this season. - He sacked Tuchel because he didn't want to collaborate in the execution of his new ideas. - Tuchel has repeatedly said he only wants to be left to do the coaching. He also said that he loved his life at Chelsea and reportedly pleaded to be given a second chance after the sack. - He replaced Tuchel with someone of the profile and communication style of Potter. Out of all the mistakes I could have pictured the new owners to make after entering the new sport, I could have never believed they'd make the farcical mistake of personally interfering with Tuchel's job, and apparently neither could Tuchel. Yet Boehly publicly confirmed it. These guys for once summarised it quite well back then:

I agree with all of this, and if we look at player recruitment in isolation, I liked the winter window. If I look at the whole context of player recruitment + manager recruitment + Boehly's interview comments, I'm very concerned. Asked about Tuchel, Boehly stated that he did not want to collaborate with the owners on their new ideas for the club, such as the sharing of data between the first team and the academy. He then went on to point out how football generally has a lot to learn from US sports. Tuchel has always pointed out that he wants to be left alone coaching the team and have as little as possible to do with the rest. He certainly wasn't fired over some data analysis tool. I have no doubt that Boehly etc had a number of absurd "idea transplants" interfering with Tuchel's work. This would also explain the hiring of Potter, an amenable and unproven manager who would accept the job under any circumstances. If they end up firing him, I fear they will look for the same profile again. So while recruitment has been good, I get the impression that the new owners have completely misjudged the significance of the coach in a football club.

In order to successfully run a football club, you need to be good at football. Data are an extremely valuable tool for those good at football, but cannot replace them. Consider recruitment for example: You can analyse a player's current performances from every single angle, but the all-decisive question of how they will perform within your teams always requires an element of judgment. There have been 13 transfers above EUR 100m in football history. I'd assume in 70% of these cases the fans were excited, and 30% of them turned out to be a resounding success. Did the other 70% fail because the club management only based their decision on 2 youtube compilations and transfermarkt.de? The most expensive transfers should be the most likely to succeed at their new club (hence the most expensive), but history teaches us that these football decisions are incredibly risky judgment calls every single time. Professionals and fans constantly get it wrong, and it's really the teams with the least mistakes that end up with the upper hand most of the time. So forget all their prior successes in other industries, there are only two things that would make me optimistic about the new owners: Either they're very good at football, or they hire people to run the club that are very good at football. So far all I've heard is that they'll implement the genius structures from other sports, and that has me extremely concerned.

That's a lot of optimism and good-will though. Tuchel may not have been right for the new Chelsea, but I'm very concerned about that new Chelsea then. I suspect Boehly thought that coaching is not that big of a deal, and as soon as he's fully injected data analysis to this antiquated sport his club would be miles ahead of everyone else. All you need in a coach is a level-headed administrator. The plan you want to stick to is an amateur's tragic misunderstanding of the sport: He thinks we just bought all the best players, they get to train every week in the best facilities, so surely at some point they start being the best team. Sadly no. "Something you can't buy" is one way to describe this fallacy. And I have to disagree, there was more of a plan at any point during Roman's reign, it simply didn't allow for dry patches. I would have liked a culture change in which we finally back our manager for a couple of years, but a world-class manager like Tuchel.

I like pretty much all of those toughts, I worry none of them quite add up in the current situation. Boehly can't change his plan because of angry fans: I agree completely. I believe Boehly should change his plan because it's a bad plan. We've been needing a culture change in the club for a long time: This is a contentious issue among fans, but I for one agree. Cultivating stability, trust in the manager and scepticism towards dressing room power could very much benefit our squad. I also believe that Potter has a very suitable character for these objective. But sadly his level-headedness is all his level-headedness is all he has to offer at this point. Stability and charisma/authority/innovation are not mutually exclusive, other clubs have managed to hold on to characters like Pep, Klopp or Arteta for many years. Since we currently have the least capable manager in our club's history, it's not the perfect but the worst possible time to favour stability. For me it goes stable quality > fluctuating quality > stable lack of quality If Boehly is convinced, we should back him: This is where you lose me entirely. As a fan I will back anyone who does good work for my club.

I don't know how different US sports function, but I know football is a competition of the best feet and minds. Nobody would deny today that data analysis is an extremely valuable tool in all parts of the game, but it will always be secondary to the coach's methods and character. Football is always volatile and there is no formulaic method to be permanently successful. The arrogance of the new owners to believe they'll be the first ones to do football right is mental. In the end, all they will achieve is to raise everyone's respect for other megamoney projects like ManCity, PSG and Roman's Chelsea. They at least understood the game well enough to know that getting in the right football people is priority no. 1.

You're completely right. The only scenario in which letting Potter see out the season makes any sense is if it's considerably cheaper to sack him the very day the season ends. But that's only gonna be the case if there's a very specific clause in his contract for this exact scenario. Otherwise his compensation would only be marginally lower than now, based on the slightly reduced remaining contract duration, a difference easily outdone by the wages saved on an interim manager. With the exception of financial matters that we cannot assess, our team desperately needs an interim manager on every single level right now.

So far I thought the owners keep backing Potter to evade total embarrassment, but after watching this video I think it may still be out of conviction. Boehly sounds like he wants to revolutionise the sport with all sorts of fresh ideas. The coaching role is extremely straightforward in those ideas, he merely needs to nurture the players and let the data wizardry unfold its magic on the pitch. That's why Potter was and still is the perfect fit for our project: A quiet man offered 600% his former salary on a 5-year deal. I see two possible future scenarios on that basis. He'll either stick with Potter and trust that his own genius will eventually manifest (he just bought all the best players, so surely at some point they'll start being the best team, right?). Or he loses patience and concludes that somehow Potter managed to mess up the easiest job in the world. Even in that second scenario, I think our current thoughts about potential replacements are way off. We're just thinking if Zidane/ Flick/ Pocchetino would be the best fit for our squad, but we're failing to consider entirely which of these managers is ready to play a 4-4-3. I suspect any decorated manager with a strong belief in their own methods is out of the question. They're "old football" and would suffer the same fate as Tuchel did. Unless Boehly has a sudden moment of complete clarity, Potter would have to be replaced by another Potter. When watching the video I see a rare combination of arrogance and idiocy, and it would actually be a beautiful sight if it wasn't our club that's subjected to it.

yes

There's putting a positive spin on a frustrating result (should City fire Pep this weekend?) There's putting a positive spin on the odd bad performance (should we have fired Tuchel after 2-5 vs West Brom in April 2021?) And there's putting a positive spin on the failure to show any promise.

There's a risk of generalising things too much when looking at history. Have Chelsea tended to fire their managers too soon? I believe yes and no. Some managers would have deserved more time, some squarely ran out of ideas. The fact that their replacements usually improved performances for a while until they themselves ran flat makes it difficult to find conclusive judgments. But it was only after the ownership change that all logic was completely thrown out the pram 1. We sack one of the best managers we ever had, after results that didn't warrant a sacking in a million years (and which were impacted by some very adverse circumstances). There's no way Roman would have sacked Tuchel after the Zagreb game, and Tuchel's attitude/character is no factor in this: I believe the stoics and the divas were always given the same amount of time by Roman. Is it possible Boehly is way more precious than him...? 2. We hire a guy to pick up these adverse circumstances who hasn't historically proven any promise to be able to deal with them. Mind-blowingly, that guy's availability was apparently even a factor in Tuchel's sacking. Despite every bit of goodwill and blind hope, he ends up being the first manager hire in Chelsea's history to not even create 5 minutes of momentum and enthusiasm. Oh, and the first manager to be given total result-independent job security. Today, I have no doubt that the owner's loyalty to Potter is based on nothing other than their own pride. Potter needs to go NOW, we need to think about a suitable replacement NOW. If that person is not available right now, pick any experienced interim candidate. This season's results barely matter at this point, but I believe we're running the risk of doing permanent damage to this squad. We've just experienced a transition where 70% of the defining faces of this club have been replaced. This is why Tuchel was so important, this is why replacing him with someone like Potter was so catastrophic. I have no doubt that every player (particularly the new signings) right now feel like they're part of some kind of collaboration rather than a club. They need someone to look up and hold on to NOW. And the ownership needs to face the embarrassment - it's merely the logical consequence of their shambolic entry into this sport. Learn and grow.

Certainly a lot of money for someone who it seems has never played in front of an audience. Hopefully it turns out a masterstroke