The Premier League season is 13 days away.....

My feelings leading up to the kick off of the new season.

Good Afternoon Ladies and Gents,

We are now under 2 weeks from the start of the new Premier League season and I for one am excited and looking forward to the new campaign as an overall Football fan. It also means that I can get back to doing what I love most and scouting twice a week.

BUT, from a Chelsea point of view I am feeling all sorts of emotions, as you all know by now I am a generally positive and optimistic supporter and I try to be balanced and fair with my reactions, not to reactionary but also not too nice and positive.

Going into the season I feel excited for the new regime and seeing how it evolves, I feel nervous for multiple reasons but the lack of influential transfers and the fear of having another average season aren’t helping my nerves and I also feel anxious as to how long the less patient supporters start calling for the managers head.

We have to have a level of patience and understanding for Enzo Maresca, his style is not something that we will see flourish consistently overnight, it can take time, adaption and some poor results to be consistent but we will and already have seen glimpses of how his football can look.

I won’t hear “He nearly blew a 20 point lead” or any rubbish like that because he is also the one who got them into a 20 odd point lead, anyone on that bandwagon needs to leave that in their head in my opinion. I have NO idea how Enzo Maresca will fare in the long term but what I do know is he and the team need support, encouragement and a bit of patience.

That does not mean that we need to be patient off the field, I have been incredibly patient, reassuring and optimistic with the directors/board/owners and their 4-window plan and whilst some of the signings we have made have been excellent pickups or brilliant potential spots etc etc they are still neglecting the need for experience and first team ready players for key positions on the field.

I will continue to be all of those things until 1st September and at that point I am ready to judge, rage, applaud, shrug my shoulders or whatever other emotion they drive me to. Bare in mind I am writing this at 4pm on Monday 5th August in the midst of lots of different transfer news around the club.

We are in huge need of 2 new attackers for me, one of those has to be a central striker and the other can be a hybrid attacker being able to play on either flank and/or down the middle. If we can do that without it being 2 14 year old Brazilians then this window will have been okay for me.

I have praised the ambition and desire shown in previous windows and we cannot expect each window to live up to the last as it is strictly not feasible, I also understand that not qualifying for the UCL has an affect on budgets but that is of their own doing by not addressing squad issues previously.

The Talent ID of our sporting directors is actually incredible, absolutely top drawer, but what they have in that area they SEVERELY lack in squad building and decision making for me, a Striker should have been signed 3 windows ago if not further beforehand. Summer 2023 they were brilliant with loan and permanent departures this summer has been awful (as we speak), unless they are leaving that until last we still have around 20 players to either be sold or loaned out this summer with only 6 European loan spots left to my calculations.

This article has been a bit of a rant and rave in the end, not my intention but sometimes thoughts need to be aired.

Let me know your thoughts and feelings respectfully in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Luke Rushbrook