20 hours ago, charierre said:

Not often. I agree with George, this though hits the nail on the head

you do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to George Galloway

15 hours ago, forbzy said:

Decent article from Martin Samuel:

At what point do the five stooges carry the can for Chelsea’s mess?

Can't get to open. Have tried a couple of browsers with no joy. Any chance someone can paste the contents? Thanks

8 minutes ago, Backbiter said:

Can't get to open. Have tried a couple of browsers with no joy. Any chance someone can paste the contents? Thanks

I managed to open it earlier. It's an archive page. Doesn't open now. He basically demolishes BlueCo mirroring everything posted here.

11 minutes ago, Backbiter said:

Can't get to open. Have tried a couple of browsers with no joy. Any chance someone can paste the contents? Thanks

So when do they take responsibility, the five stooges? Paul Winstanley, Laurence Stewart, Curly, Mo and Larry, whatever their names are, the brains trust in charge of directing football at Chelsea? At what point are they considered culpable for the mess that has been made of this club?

It is hard, keeping pace with the Manchester clubs, with Arsenal and Liverpool, without Roman Abramovich’s largesse both above and below the counter. But it shouldn’t be as hard as this. And certainly, given Chelsea’s expenditure, it should not be a struggle to keep pace with Brighton & Hove Albion, Brentford or Bournemouth. It is not the top five that have been troubling Chelsea for a number of weeks now. It is the clubs sitting seventh to 14th. That is where Chelsea have been heading under Liam Rosenior, not just out of the Champions League places, but out of the European places altogether. They are the Wolverhampton Wanderers of six months ago right now, the Tottenham Hotspur of next season

Had Rosenior remained, it was hard to see where their next point was coming from. He looked like that school teacher we all remember, the one the class had stopped listening to, who tried to instil discipline as the misbehaviour carried on and the paper aeroplanes flew regardless. It was possible to feel pity for him while at the same time acknowledging he really wasn’t up to the job. And while that is on Rosenior, it is also very much on the men who appointed him; who placed such an unqualified figure in a vitally important role; who shaped this mish-mash of a squad and let them all sink into the swamp together.

Chelsea were in a good place going into this season. The victory at the Club World Cup, particularly the win in the final against Paris Saint-Germain, suggested they were at last making progress. There was a philosophy and the basis of a very good squad. How has it come to this?

The parting with Enzo Maresca now appears one of the most calamitous decisions in any club’s modern history. The manager thought he would be heard having won two trophies, the five stooges felt they were smarter. He left, they weren’t. It is plain that dismissing him alienated key players such as Enzo Fernández and Marc Cucurella, and the appointment of a novice in the unfortunate Rosenior only compounded the internal dissatisfaction. When did it start to go wrong? On day one.

The record shows that Rosenior won six of his first seven matches in charge, but that isn’t strictly correct. Maresca left on January 1 and it was quickly known that Rosenior would be his replacement. He wanted to take a final game with Strasbourg, away to Nice, on January 3, by which time it was all but confirmed this was his farewell. Chelsea had a game against Manchester City the following day, taken by Calum McFarlane — who is now back in charge until the end of the season — meaning Rosenior’s first game was at Fulham away, on January 7. Except he wasn’t on the touchline at Craven Cottage, he was in the stands, observing. As if Chelsea, who had already slipped to fifth, could afford that. As if a manager of elite pedigree could wait a minute longer than necessary to get involved. It spoke, not of thoroughness, but of timidity, of performance, playing to the gallery. Fulham away is still a tough gig. Avoiding it meant Rosenior’s first game was Charlton Athletic, a relegation-threatened Championship side, in the FA Cup. It smacked of Ruud van Nistelrooy’s time at Leicester City, sidestepping an away fixture at Brentford to ensure his first match was soft-touch West Ham United at home. Van Nistelrooy, like Rosenior, won — but it didn’t end well for either man.

There was too much of that in Rosenior’s tenure. Nonsense about respecting the ball, the performative disciplining of Fernández to the team’s cost against Manchester City. He took away his captain’s armband, then inexplicably gave it back last night. And what was that, those long stares at the away end after the 3-0 defeat by Brighton? It was as if the manager was in a film, and certainly not a good one.

Chelsea may not be performing like they have a world-class squad, but their dressing room has plenty of players who will see themselves that way. World Cup winners, European Championship winners, European trophy winners, domestic champions and, of course, a great many Club World Cup champions. Game recognises game. The moment Rosenior attempted to control a loose ball in a Carabao Cup tie against Arsenal, only to see it spin off his shoe to widespread derision, anyone who knows football winced a little inside. That wouldn’t be forgotten. If things went wrong for him at Chelsea, that would be the changing room verdict. Can’t play, not one of us. Kenny Dalglish was an absolute beginner, succeeding Joe Fagan at Liverpool; but he was Kenny Dalglish. And managers do not have to be great players. That’s not the point. José Mourinho wasn’t, nor Jürgen Klopp. But those guys arrived with an aura, and a serious assortment of trophies. A Bundesliga title wrested from Bayern Munich, a Champions League won against the odds at Porto. They had knowledge to impart. Knowledge of how to win.

Rosenior had nothing comparable. His managerial pedigree is underwhelming. His playing career was too. After that poor touch at Arsenal, Estêvão — who is 18 — asked him if he had actually played. Rosenior generously told that story against himself, but it was equally wince-inducing. Sir Alex Ferguson managed better players than he ever was, but one imagines none of the class of 92 would have pointed that out.

And Chelsea look like nothing more than a team that has switched off from the manager. The performance against Brighton on Tuesday was as bad as any witnessed in the Premier League this season. As poor as anything turned in by Wolves or Tottenham Hotspur, as weak as West Ham United at Wolves in January. All Rosenior had left in his post-match press conferences was impotent fury. Empty threats about what he would do to put it right, angry invective about his standards.

What standards? Rosenior had a reputation as a good young coach, but that is all. He seemed to have done a good job at Hull City. There were impressive reports from Strasbourg. Yet it was increasingly apparent he had been overpromoted, plunged into a club and a challenge that was beyond his frame of reference. If he had great wisdom to impart, Chelsea’s players were staring out of the window or doodling in the textbook as he spoke.

Whose fault is this? We’re back to the stooges, and senior executives such as Behdad Eghbali, a managing partner of the investment firm Clearlake Capital, which is part of BlueCo’s ownership group. Eghbali also appears to fancy himself as a judge of football matters. It was Eghbali who said Chelsea’s policy was no mid-season managerial changes — there have now been two in 2026 and we’re not at the end of the fourth month — uttering the deathless endorsement “I think we’re behind Liam” last week. It was this that somehow gave Rosenior the confidence to announce that the board were “100 per cent” with him on Monday. As a Chelsea manager from the 1960s, Tommy Docherty once said he didn’t want the board behind him. He wanted them in front of him, so he could see what they were doing.

The mystery is how the managers fall, but those responsible for this crisis remain upright. L’Équipe, the French newspaper, reported that Stewart and Winstanley have been stripped of their strategic roles at the BlueCo-owned Strasbourg, but it transpires this was only to skirt Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules, rather than a judgment on their performance. What have Chelsea done to deserve the full attention of this five-man brains trust, though? This is a mess of a squad, lopsided, callow, with too many ordinary characters and few leaders. Rosenior wasn’t the man for the job, but who is? Any manager with a reputation will not entertain the stooges shaping his future, any manager grateful to be through the door at Stamford Bridge risks suffering Rosenior’s fate. As for the players, those who had reservations about staying true to the Chelsea project will be scheming an exit route as we speak. Why should Cole Palmer invest in the next grand plan, wait for the great lurch forward? “When you get punched in the face, you’ve got to fight back, you’ve got to stand up and fight,” said Eghbali last week. A bit hard, when it is your own fist that keeps doing the punching.

1 hour ago, PloKoon13 said:

Making me tear up

I want to make a joke here but it’d ruin the original point.

Sticking with the directors then eh?

So either the squad is sh*t or you lied about there being no statistical relationship between manager and results.

Wont take morality lessons from a gooner. Did they not bribe their way into the top division years ago making it possible for them to become the club they are today. I could be wrong and im happy to be corrected on that if so🙂👍

Also the ones moaning about Abramovich are just pissed of that he came in and rocked the boat and broke the monopoly of Man U and Arsenal. They just wanted no one able to compete with them. f**k em.

In what world did they think hiring the entire Brighton staff would make them successful. These clowns are now entering the Find Out phase of FAFO.

There is no way Beavis and Butthead should still be at the club that alone tells me they haven’t learnt their lesson.

Those five idiots couldn’t build a Keystage 1 project.

The moment they got rid of all the old staff immediately after take over I knew we were f**ked.

I have never seen an acquisition where the new owners gut the people running the business immediately. It’s generally a gradual process over months or years.

But these geniuses decided they know better.

18 hours ago, Vialli96 said:

It’s hard to see why any established, self respecting top manager would want to take the Chelsea job. No clear long term structure, no authority to implement your ideas, a poorly assembled inexperienced squad in need of upheaval, too much interference from those up top when it comes to transfers, substitutions, tactics, team talks, half time and full time dressing room visits etc. Having to operate in these conditions and environment and the risk of permanently damaging your reputation and future employment prospects is just not worth it.

As a Chelsea fan I would advise all prospective managers to stay away under the current ownership.

I also see breaches in financial fair play and regulation coming up due to reckless spending, extortionate prices paid for young players with no resale value, no European football and failure to secure sponsorship.

Here’s an idea, Eghbali, Boehly and the SP’s should be in the dugout when Chelsea are fighting relegation, because that is our current trajectory, and should be in the dugout when Chelsea do get relegated.

It truly is stupid. All the owners had to do was "Here's some money, buy a couple good ones and sell those we don't need"

The SDs (I still have no idea why we need 5 of them) should just go "Hey manager, what kind of football do you see us doing? Our people will meet your people and we see what we can do"

Instead our club is run as if it's a plot in a Simon Pegg movie

1 hour ago, Roland The Bruin said:

Also the ones moaning about Abramovich are just pissed of that he came in and rocked the boat and broke the monopoly of Man U and Arsenal. They just wanted no one able to compete with them. f**k em.

Over the years, the fans that would speak up against Abramovich the most were Arsenal and Liverpool fans, we all know why. They are bitter. Liverpool are bitter because they consider themselves holier-than-thou and feel like they have a god given right to be the best in the league, and they are also bitter because it was their loss against us that guaranteed Abramovich would buy us. Arsenal are bitter because they were replaced and we achieved everything they couldn't achieve. Chelsea became the number 1 club in London, and they became a laughing stock for 20 years.

What they are really angry at is their own teams failures, that's the reality. If we weren't around, Wenger would still have become a joke, Liverpool would still be the Stevie Me show and signing players not capable of winning the league. If Abramovich didn't come in and transform us, the only thing that would have happened is complete dominance by United and the Premier League becoming a one league team. Ferguson would have signed Robben and probably Carvalho before he signed Vidic and they would have had a monster attack and defence that would dominate.

Edited April 23Apr 23 by Scott Harris

Every club is salt of the earth, Engerland forever, wonderfully run on a shoestring with players born in the shadow of the 15th century stadium. Then Some Foreigner came and bought Chelsea FC and all their silverware and now they got what they deserve.

Yeahyeahyeah.

2 hours ago, El regreso said:

In what world did they think hiring the entire Brighton staff would make them successful. These clowns are now entering the Find Out phase of FAFO.

There is no way Beavis and Butthead should still be at the club that alone tells me they haven’t learnt their lesson.

Those five idiots couldn’t build a Keystage 1 project.

The moment they got rid of all the old staff immediately after take over I knew we were f**ked.

I have never seen an acquisition where the new owners gut the people running the business immediately. It’s generally a gradual process over months or years.

But these geniuses decided they know better.

Exactly. It is one thing to get rid of the manager, but they have pretty well replaced the entire staff over the last few years to the point where there is nobody left with any real connection to the club pre-Clearlake. Given that, it is hardly surprising that many of us fans feel no connection to the club any more.

They praise Brighton for being the most well ran club but they got it wrong and copied the wrong club.

They needed to copy Man City, not Brighton. I know there’s the 115 charges etc but on the field, City have had fantastic success consistently signing elite players, high quality managers and winning trophies.

Edited April 23Apr 23 by JM7

13 hours ago, PhilH930 said:

Thought this was an interesting chart confirming we have been outrun by all 34 teams we’ve played this season. Perhaps possession based football drove part of this, but still, confirms the eye test and is a problem.

That's been BlueCo's excuse given in the media, but it doesn't fly against the numbers either. Look at this list:

Every single one of these players, with the exception of Soucek, plays for an attacking, possession-dominant team. For comparison, Fernandez regularly gets cited as our top runner but clocks up a meagre ~11km on his best performances.

It's even worse if you look at the aggregate totals up until MW 33:



Look at the players and positions, with the exception of Adrien Truffert (LB) they are all CMs and AMs. In fairness, many players aren't on there because of squad rotation etc. Why aren't Caicedo and Fernandez on that list, given they play the same position and have similar minutes/games played?

The answer is simple as @nonotnowjim says - almost every puzzling tactical and footballing issue we have comes down to the simple fact that the players are coached to play slowly and consequently they think, act and react slower than any other team in the league. This is not something that has happened overnight but it is something that has compounded over months and years.

Edited April 24Apr 24 by SydneyChelsea

On 23/04/2026 at 08:12, forbzy said:

Decent article from Martin Samuel:

At what point do the five stooges carry the can for Chelsea’s mess?

As a Chelsea manager from the 1960s, Tommy Docherty once said he didn’t want the board behind him. He wanted them in front of him, so he could see what they were doing.

Good one Tommy 😁

10 hours ago, forbzy said:

Exactly. It is one thing to get rid of the manager, but they have pretty well replaced the entire staff over the last few years to the point where there is nobody left with any real connection to the club pre-Clearlake. Given that, it is hardly surprising that many of us fans feel no connection to the club any more.

It makes you wonder why they paid so much for the club, when they immediately replaced everything that could be replaced.

They've ended up with a new playing staff that they've paid fees of about £1.2 billion for (and actually worth a lot less), plus the stadium and the Cobham site. Stamford Bridge as a site I reckon must be worth about £400-500m, based on what was paid for the much larger Earl's Court site up the road. It also has considerably less development scope due to the Richmond Hill line-of-sight to St Paul's Cathedral Law which will restrict the height of anything built on the actual pitch/stands foot print, should their plan involve selling the site. Personally I think they overpaid by a billion. Well done Roman LOL.

I don’t often agree with this clown but he’s right here. I remember when he said we should stop signing players or players should stop signing for us and we rightly blasted him. In hindsight he was correct because the actual people signing the players and the players they are signing of the same level, absolute garbage.

We will not get another top level manager ever, fans really need to start voting with their pockets period.

It's the banality of the evil that annoys me. Like no one in the machine speaks up or whistleblows or anything. The closest was Cucu and even he pussyfoots around it.

It seems like the only ones that do care are the fans. The media are only covering it because of the stature of our club.

On 22/04/2026 at 20:19, dermott said:

He reads like a poster, banned, back with a new user name. Someone you had dealings with.

It couldn't be, could it? The prodigal son returns

I don't expect these owners to improve the situation and just hope someone else steps in with promises to start stadium development in a year and brings in a progressive manager like Poch to build a team that plays exciting football and is likely to get us into the CL by the 2nd season.

I don't think the US owners know enough about the game, yet as financial men must soon start to realise they are in danger of severely throwing the baby out with the bath water.

50 minutes ago, GarnachoCheese said:

It couldn't be, could it? The prodigal son returns

There are similarities. Didn't you suss him somehow last time?