The Russian’s Evolution

[Dorset]

There is a certain delicious irony to be found, tried and tasted by those Chelsea fans, like myself, who believe that the game against Blackburn might just be our turning point of the season. Maybe not to the extent that we turn everything around Premiership-wise, but certainly we could look back on this stultifying performance as a sort of Dylanesque turn, turn, turn [to everything there is a season] moment in what is fast becoming a watershed one for [virtually] all of the squad. In truth, there damn well should be such a turning point if individual performances from the senior element on show are anything to go by and how nice it would be to recall the fact that Big Sam, playing his very own special brand of football at a bizarrely rapturous and sparsely-filled Ewood Park, was responsible for making our owner and management finally see the light.

Not that anyone who saw last night’s sublime showing by the youth team against another of Sam’s creations would have cause to think any differently, because when you’ve experienced at firsthand the full force of the tide of talent ready to burst through our ranks you kinda know that something’s got to give sooner (please God) rather than later. The genie is well and truly out of this particular bottle and, as with Aladdin and his lamp, ‘new for old’ is a catchphrase to repeat ad nauseam, or at least until, hopefully, it becomes our mantra. This is no Arsene Wenger epiphany on my part either, just a realisation that, if we cannot brush aside the likes of Blackburn with ageing troops so previously well drilled in the exercise, we might as well strike while the iron is nowhere near crash-hot.

Of course, as per usual, Media speculation is rife and gleefully intrusive on this subject, with hacks such as Matt Hughes of the Times producing a double-page of doleful nothingness, presented as a panacea for our current ills, with Ancelotti as the main butt of the brickbats (dear old Matt never jokes in print) and no more than a passing reference to Kakuta, Bruma and Borini. His perception is one of them having had a year-long stint on the bench, which is untrue, but I suppose they can take comfort from the fact that he has, at long last, acknowledged their existence. That said, this is typical of the approach made by journalists who will damn Roman if he goes on a summer spending spree and damn him if he doesn’t, but it is a situation we have brought upon ourselves through a failure to gamble on blooding some of the youngsters for anything substantially longer than five minutes at the end of Premiership games. Blackburn had an 18 year-old centre back against us on Sunday who was pulled out of their youth team to go head-to-head with Drogba and Anelka and he did just fine. His current status in the Premiership is now higher than Bruma’s as a result - enough said.

So this time it has to be players, not coaches, who must be prepared to cede places or go and if ever there was to be a day to be seized by Abramovich it is this one. Fresh from the expectation provided by youngsters on a level just one away from an earlier group, led by the likes of Bruma, Kakuta, van Aanholt, Borini and Hutchinson, there has to be a realisation that stacking them all up season after season is no longer an option. Indeed, unlike those named above, who are in danger of hitting the Reserve buffers well into their early twenties, Jeffery Bruma has already had to make a quantum leap from captaincy of the current youth team (after earlier appearances in the side that finished runner-up to Citeh two years ago) to make the first team bench regularly, thus becoming the only big-breakthrough hope not heading for the sidings and carrying with him fear of an influx of new signings replenishing the squad this summer.

For those of you who think that the wheels have finally come off the Dorset trolley with this post, let me state quite categorically that a handful of games away from possible Premiership success is not my ideal time to make a youthful statement of intent team-wise, but the major risk [alienation of some senior players] is a risk worth taking because Sunday’s match gave a clear indication of where we stand should nothing be done. Personally, in those circumstances, I imagine another Blackburn moment will rear its ugly head again, somewhere over the next few weeks. It doesn’t take that amount of imagination to see it coming, although it does take more than we have shown in games just recently. Not being one to predict line-ups and not wishing to see this topic degenerate into a name-dropping session, I’m loath to suggest a team to play Pompey, but I can understand critics wanting proof that transition can start at Fratton Park, so here goes:-

Turnbull, Bruma, Alex, Terry, van Aanholt, Mikel, Matic, Malouda, Kakuta Sturridge, Drogba (played as 4-diamond-2)

There you have it Carlo and please, if needs be, sanction it Roman. Then again, do more than that - grab it with both hands and begin to squeeze the decrepitude out of the first team squad while the annoyance is still firmly at the forefront of your mind. Do it now, before the almost inevitable end of season disappointment precedes a new season of glory hunting, thereby making you think twice about the whole process.

[ethicalstrategy]

An interesting line up Dorset.

Not a cat in hell's chance of it happening though.

What it doesn't do is give us width.

Cech will be fit, so he will play.

I'd like to see Kakuta and Malouda play wide with Drogba up front.

Midfield Mikel, Lampard and Matic

Defensively, I think just Bruma with Zirkhov playing left back.

[Zola]

I agree with everything.

However the media, fans and everyone in football are fickle. Fickle, fickle, fickle.

If Carlo plays a few youngsters and we lose, there will be thousands on here condemning his "Incompetence" etc.

Carlo is facing a momumental case of Catch 22.

He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't (depending of course, if we lose at Pompey).

Unless we win all our remaining games, the usual muppets will rear their heads and call for Carlo to be sacked.

Edited March 23, 2010 by Zola

[Spiller86]

Interesting post we'll still play the full strength team, because if we don't everyone will say we've given up hope of winning this year. Not sure about some of the other selections but I'd certainly like to have a look at Van Aanholt (who I watched a few times for Newcastle) as well as see how Matic would travel in the midfield.

One thing I would say though is whether we want to force these guys in for this match. Pompey are playing with great spirit at the moment and Fratton will be intimidating. I'd perfer we wait till Bolton or Stoke at home, by which time we will have a better idea of whether we are going to get anywhere this year.

[Dorset]

From another site and I couldn’t agree more with this guy….

A new blueprint for Chelsea

Over the past two days, following an underwhelming ejection from the Champions League and serious damage to our League prospects, I have been writing about how this particular model of Chelsea is reaching its limit on the pitch. Potentially more worrying, however, is how we`re actually regressing off the pitch, i.e. in money terms. Given that any number of other clubs are going forward, there is a serious risk of collapse if the club doesn`t propose a new model.

In the past few years, Chelsea have been spoilt when it comes to money. Roman has always been there to write the cheques that clear up the unpleasant numbers on the bottom line. We are, of course, supremely grateful to this generosity. But it cannot always be this way. New UEFA rules will come into play that force clubs to live within their means, and not become reliant on benefactors. We could decry that these are unfair: thanks to Roman`s generosity Chelsea are effectively debt-free. Why should these rules affect Roman`s model, as opposed to (say) the Manchester United model of purchasing a club on credit that is then heaped onto the club`s balance sheet, saddling ManYoo with some €800 million in debt. Or the Real Madrid model of taking out loans to spunk out a net of €180 million in player purchases over the summer?

Be that as it may, those are UEFA`s rules; over a three year cycle, a club cannot generate a net deficit. We are going to have to comply with this. We are, currently, very far from that and we need to change how the club does things to be able to comply. At present, some 70% of Chelsea`s revenues go on wages, essentially player wages. This is a much higher proportion than our rivals in England. By way of comparison, Arsenal don`t even pay 50%. This becomes an even more dramatic problem when one considers that the wages are increasing (thanks to the constant and unsustainable contracts) at the same time as revenues are actually decreasing. The club is very far from the stated plan of breaking even.

On the pitch, the squad has become stale. The players have not become bad overnight, but we have a squad that is considerably older than our rivals, at the same time as several clubs are prioritising speed. Our creaking elder statesmen simply cannot keep the pace. All this combines to a problem that cannot be addressed if the club simply continues as it did before. To start with, the temptation could be there to sack Ancelotti at the end of the season for not having achieved enough (early exit from the Champions League, second in the League …), bring in our sixth manager in 4 years, and to spend the summer running after a number of high-profile signings.

And that would simply be to add to our current problems, make the club`s direction even more unsustainable. To start with, we need to develop managerial stability. Each managerial change costs the club some £10-£15 million, the new guy comes in with a new set of plans, requests new signings, and tries to implement a new regime. In the meantime, the relationship between existing players and the club tips even further in the players` favour. One of the reasons why we are in our current malaise is that the players have far too much power. And one of the reasons why they have so much power is the constant changes of manager.

Carlo is not a bad manager. Time will tell if he`s a great one, he`s done more than enough to be given another crack at it, he should be the man at the help next season. For all these reasons, we should stick with Carlo, and he should be given a radical mandate to renovate the squad. He needs the time and the authority to impose himself on the players, many of whom have grown complacent. The manager is never going to be able to scare the players into delivering results (for instance to hold onto an advantage at half time) if players think that the man in the technical area could be out before long. The players need to be scared that they are more likely to be out of the club before the manager.

Managerial stability is a first key to developing a real personality and project at the club. Chelsea have to stick with Ancelotti, recognising that a core reason for our malaise is the constant change of coach. But the radical mandate has to go beyond simply having the coach plan the next season from the vantage point of having the last one under his belt. He needs to be given the authority to clear out our current squad. Yesterday I wrote extensively about how the club needs to get real on player contracts. There should be a deep look at the list of 25 first-teamers to offload a good third of them who are on contracts that bear little relationship to their performance. Obviously any player who is over 30 years of old will need to be put under particular scrutiny. That`s not to say that all of them should go, only that we can expect that, from that age on, their performances are not likely to get any better. Some of these players (Drogba, Lampard) have a couple of years more in them. Others, however, should be shown the door.

Chelsea should not be afraid to get rid of many of these players. The club was ruthless in offloading Andriy Shevchenko despite breaking a then British record at the time. Arguably Sheva still had something going for him, more than many of the players at the club who should leave. We should look to reduce the wage bill considerably, and that means that a couple of players, frankly, are cheaper being allowed to leave on a free than continuing at the club. It goes without saying that many of the existing players looking for a contract renewal should be under particular scrutiny. If the club considers that they still have something to offer, they can be offered a contract no greater than the existing one, and preferably less, but with performance related pay. A number of them, however, should be shown the door. What cannot happen is that the club is held to ransom over absurd wage demands.

We should resist the temptation to run after the same transfer targets as, say, Madrid or Manchester City. Therein lies the domain of silly money, both in transfer fees and in wages. We need to try to snap up players who can become the Madrid and Man City targets in 3 years time, rather than competing with them now. And Chelsea needs to step up the use of our own youngsters. This is not only a question of common sense, it is another UEFA necessity. We will have to register a growing number of our home-grown players to the UEFA squad, so we need to come up with them. Several of our players are on loan now, in other top flight clubs. It`s time to decide whether they are Chelsea material or not, but it is unfair to park them yet again on a loan. Of the top-flight loanees, we have Jack Cork, Scott Sinclair, Franco di Santo, Michael Mancienne, Miroslav Stoch. By all accounts, Stoch is having an unbelievable season at Twente, and will go to the World Cup with Slovakia. There is one player who must be ready to step up to the Chelsea first team. Of the players in the reserves at the club, we should mention Borini, Kakuta, Hutchinson, Matic, Bruma, Sebek. Out of this list of youngsters at the club and on loan, we should have the courage to bring, say, 4 or 5 into the first 25 squad.

Of course, we can expect that these players are still raw and not (quite) Chelsea first team material. But the club should have the vision to accept that if they aren`t given chances, they probably will never attain that first-team status, whereas they might get there if given that opportunity. The series of endless loans needs to stop, it looks merely like a way of parking players who are frustrated at not breaking into the first team. By contrast, we also need to accept that a number of these players might make mistakes when given the chance, but that this is part of the learning process, and (to some extent) an acceptable one.

And here`s the central element of the blueprint: for one or two seasons, the club needs to revise the expectations thrust upon the manager. We need to expect that there are radical changes required in the squad, including taking chances on some youngsters. For this, we have to accept that there could be a few lean years whilst these players grown into their new roles. For next season, Carlo should be told that he has a year of transition ahead of him which will come about as a large number of first-teamers will leave and be replaced, partly, by youngsters. For this, we are entitled to expect only a top four placing and continued presence in the Champions League. Anything else is, well, a bonus.

We will never grow as a club if there is constant (and unrealistic) pressure piled on the coach, it also fuels the incentive to take the easy option and sign superstar players on silly money. That way lies the meltdown of our club that could well happen if we don`t adopt a radical new blueprint.

[Chippy]

That last one is a very well thought out post, most of it is obvious but seeing it put into words makes it all the more interesting as it shows that like Dorsts first post in this thread suggests, people may at last be ready to have a bit of patience while a manager sorts this squad out..like Dorset said if we used next season as the start of a transition where we move some of the older players on and aim for a top four place..might prove difficult but certainly would prove exciting.

I for one would be happy to go a couple more seasons without the title in the hope that we get an exciting ride along the way with some new faces playing for there places in the best club in the best league rather than to boost their already massive piggy banks.

I doubt we'll see too much of it this season and I think as the players have got us this far letting them have a final push hoping for a second wind might be a reasonable approach but if that was something like the plan for next season I for one would be well happy.

Edited March 24, 2010 by Chippy

[Barry Bridges]

Couldn't agree more Dorset.

If not just to bleed the youngsters, then to show the seniors there are other options if they continue there lack of performances.

I think having a fresh enthusiastic youngers in the side might even help energize the older legs.

fantastic post again

Edited March 24, 2010 by Barry Bridges