Enzo Maresca & The Sporting Directors: Actions have consequences

Failure to achieve our targets this season & to build a strong squad must be addressed

Having calmed down after Sunday’s disastrous result against Ipswich, I’ve had some thoughts about head coach Enzo Maresca and the club going forward. I’ve tried to be calm and rational here, rather than make rash judgements based on emotion.

Just to address the elephant in the room. The Ipswich result was simply unacceptable and there is no excuse for it. Even worse were Maresca’s comments post match essentially blaming the fans for the goals we conceded. You simply don’t do that, especially after drawing to a team in the bottom 3 of the Premier League. Maresca owes Chelsea fans a big apology, and as soon as possible. But for many fans, that was the final straw, and I don’t blame them.

For me, I’m still a little hesitant to see us pull the trigger with the manager again. Not because of any love of Maresca but more a desire for stability and above all, because as many of us know, the major problems at Chelsea are above the manager.

The biggest reason we’re such a mess is the people who’ve wasted £1 billion since January 2023 building this squad which is essentially a Europa league squad, at best, and to me, actively sabotaged our chances in the summer and especially in January. I’m talking of course about the Sporting Directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, who apparently still enjoy the full backing of co-owner Behdad Eghbali. Its all fine according to them, no problems, all smiles, project on schedule, everyone is doing a world class job, apparently.

Of course, we all know that’s garbage. Despite some successes, they’re doing an awful job overall, and if we’re to get change at the club, it has to begin with them. They don’t even have to be sacked, just moved to different roles.

They might have signed a lot of top young talent, but that’s not the whole job. If they are to stay, let them focus on young talent, that’s clearly their specialty.

But the fact is they wasted £200m last summer and have actively weakened our squad in the last year. None of the players they signed are currently in our first choice line up, two of them aren’t even in our squad, they’re out on loan. In their 5 windows we’ve spent £1 billion but still we have:

No pure elite 9.

No top GK.

No commanding CB.

No pure 6.

Not enough top class wingers.

Not enough leaders or experience.

No serious club lets this go without consequences. No other club praises staff who’ve been responsible for this or backs them. This is not how best in class operators work, if they think it is, they’re living in a fantasy land.

Rumours persist about players wanting to leave and release clauses if we don’t make the Champions League. Hypothetically, if someone like Cole Palmer left, I think there’d genuinely be major protests outside the Bridge, way bigger than the ones we saw a few months ago. It would make a mockery of any claims of ambition and alienate the owners and sporting directors permanently, as if it's even repairable now. If that happens, heads have to roll, and that's a non-negotiable. To be honest, it's a non-negotiable already.

Who knows, maybe they all laugh off criticism they see here, just anger from stupid fans. I mean what do we know having seen winning Chelsea squads for 25 years and spent a lifetime watching successful teams and squads? I joke, but given the tone of some briefings, it feels like this is how they see the fans.

This is not a “jobs for my mates and lets piss a load of money and boost our egos and mock fans and have a laugh” job. If they don’t take their job seriously they’re welcome to go and shut the door on their way out. I’m done being respectful to people who are overtly and actively harming my football club and setting it back years. They’ve done very little to deserve my or any fans’ respect.

Spending £1 billion to have a team which quite literally is bottling a Champions League spot and can’t beat a relegation team in two meetings this season is utter incompetence.

Newcastle for example, have spent about £500m since their takeover, starting from a lower base. They’ve won a trophy and likely will make the CL two years out of three. They fans love their manager, they have a connection to him and the team and owners, the football is great to watch, there’s a winning mentality, a combination of youth and experience. And its working.

Overall, we’ve spent 3 times what Newcastle have, from a higher starting point, all to be a Europa league team who loses finals (so far), potentially bottles a CL place, and still needs about 5-6 key players. No leaders, no experience, key positions not filled, no winning mentality, no connection between fans and players or any of the permanent managers they’ve appointed so far.

It's so laughably and obviously bad its unreal.

On Enzo Maresca himself, I’ll be honest, his football has never been the style I ideally want to play. However, if it's working & we're improving, I've always been happy to back him & give him time. I don’t need Chelsea to play the way I want to play, I want a winning Chelsea team where players are improving, developing and performing - and crucially, competing in the Champions League and winning trophies. If that comes a way that’s not my preference, fine by me.

There is another reason outside the people above Maresca that I'm holding on. I don't want another change. I'm honestly tired of the constant cycle of change at Chelsea. We’ve not had a manager do two full seasons since Antonio Conte, who left in 2018 - 7 years ago - and unless there is change above him, I don't think it solves a thing.

Being honest, maybe long term Maresca isn't the guy, but right now, whoever we hire next will face the same problems.

To be clear: Enzo Maresca was absolutely wrong to blame the fans for the result. There’s no excuse for that, its unacceptable and he should apologise.

However, I do get frustrated at how quickly some fans turn on Chelsea managers, just generally. For a section of fans, it's almost like the minute we lose a few games they turn on a manager, and we can't go on like that if we want to be winners again.

Whoever is manager, they will have a bad run of form, a bad few weeks. Especially with the squad we have now and even next season. With young players there will be inconsistency, and we’re simply not at the level where we should be demanding victories every single game. That’s not lack of standards, its reality.

As a fanbase, we need to realise, we’ve not been title challengers for 8 years. Two owners, both who spent a lot of money, have failed to build title challenging squads.

We had a good knockout side in the latter Roman Abramovich years, not a title challenging squad. Now we have a young squad, built fairly poorly, who aren’t even Champions League quality yet. So expecting us to play like a title-challenging side and get those kinds of results in the next year or two at least, probably isn’t realistic.

Also, every Chelsea fan has standards. We all want to win league titles, Champions Leagues and trophies and be competing.

But despite all the money spent, we’re not at that level, and that’s why I am much stronger about demanding accountability from those above the manager, and consequences.

At some point we will all have to be patient with a Chelsea manager through a poor run. We can’t keep waiting for the perfect manager to be patient with “I’ll be patient if it's the right manager” sounds hollow if someone says it every 12 months.

No one, not any manager in the world, is coming in with these SD's (or any others) and where we are and winning every game immediately, or even winning all games we should win. That's not where we are right now, and won't be for a couple of years.

The people to blame for that are the Sporting Directors, who should be facing consequences for their failure to build a strong squad with such a huge amount of money.

This is how it is. Instant success couldn't happen now even if Roman Abramovich was still in charge, it's not how football is now. Fans need to accept change in how success is achieved, if we're ever going to be a serious club again.

I would respect Behdad Eghbali a lot more if he came out and admitted mistakes have been made, the strategy hasn't worked well enough and needs tweaking, then made the changes necessary and showed ambition in action. If he took fans' concerns seriously. Even if it means taking a step back to go forwards.

I do believe Behdad wants to win, I'm just convinced he's hired the wrong people to help him do it. He needs a Luis Campos, one of the best sporting directors in the world with a record to match, and Campos is gettable right now as he’s nearing the end of his PSG contract.

We should be making Campos an offer he can’t refuse and give him carte blanche to improve the squad and hire the right head coach, and trust him to do that. Even if you keep the current sporting directors, appoint him as CEO of Football and give him power over the mens team above them. To me that’s the obvious decision, and there’s no excuse not to at least try.

Either way, like it or not, we have to be patient. Success nowadays needs a good structure, strategy and long term approach. It needs patience. Our structure needs sorting out if we’re going to get where we should be, and where the owners say they want to be.

The people at the top should be held accountable for failure before anyone else. There’s no excuses anymore and fans are running out of patience, if they’ve not lost it already. Fans won’t remain quiet if things go on as they are, and they have a right to be frustrated.

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