Total power. Zero accountability (apart from Enzo Maresca). The football structure of Chelsea men

It's an absolute disgrace!

On Friday I saw an episode of London is Blue Podcast with Matt Law, who has good connections at Chelsea. In it, he said he believes if Chelsea fail to qualify for the Champions League this season, the pressure from the hierarchy (as in, co-owner Behdad Eghbali and Clearlake Capital) on head coach Enzo Maresca would be a lot more than that on our Sporting Directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart.

He also added they had no performance review last season whatsoever - which means they’re unlikely to have one this season. Basically something most of us in regular jobs have every year, no matter how high up, and they don’t have one.

Forget football for a moment. On an operational level, in terms of how you run a serious, high performance environment, that’s simply abysmal.

Behdad has alleged to have seen Chelsea under Roman Abramovich as a family cartel, run by him and his allies. Well when you don’t hold Sporting Directors accountable for their decisions whatever the outcome, the impact is the same or worse.

And here is something almost as bad if not worse, a quote from head coach Enzo Maresca in Friday’s pre-West Ham press conference. It indicates that he’s basically instructed from on high how many minutes he can give players, in particular during the transfer window, and that its restricted his substitutions this month:

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“When we don’t win you’re asking me why we don’t make change. It’s a good thing that on Monday everything finishes”

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Now I get sometimes Sporting Directors have influence on coaches around some players, and selection, of course. I get not playing players in the squad who are on the way out. That’s totally normal.

But literally impeding a head coach from making game changing substitutions, which seems to be the case here and can directly impact the result, is something else entirely.

Again, this is not how serious clubs operate. Can you imagine the Man City Sporting Director actually telling Pep Guardiola which players he can play or how many minutes he’s allowed to give players in his squad? Pep would walk out if someone tried this with him.

Its absolutely laughable. The head coach in this case is simply a puppet for the Sporting Directors. Its an absolute joke and its ridiculously unfair on Enzo Maresca, a good man doing a good job in what appears to be a difficult environment.

In terms of accountability, its crucially important to note, our current mens squad was built almost entirely by the current Sporting Directors with about £1 billion over the last two years and four, nearly five transfer windows, and has now had two different managers, both of whom they appointed.

Of last summer’s signings, only two, Jadon Sancho and Pedro Neto, regularly make the PL starting XI, (and indictment of the summer window itself), so right now its basically the same team as last season.

If not one, but two different head coaches cannot achieve top 4 with this squad, the first people to be held accountable should not be the manager, but those who signed the players and built the squad. And if they don’t have any kind of performance review, that means they can be utterly useless at their job, even get us relegated, and it doesn’t matter, there’s no accountability. It appears they can basically do what they like with no consequences.

If my boss does a terrible job, its not me who should lose my job, but him. This is normal in all serious organisations, accountability for actions, feedback, job reviews. This is a normal thing in life, and any decent person will accept being held responsible for their actions.

But our Sporting Directors seem to be made from Teflon. It seems nothing negative is ever their fault, and every success is down to them. Perception is everything, and the perception right now is it is impossible for them to ever make a mistake, and certainly never be held accountable for anything. It may not be true, but its certainly the message being communicated.

This, of course, is being allowed by Behdad Eghbali, who himself acts like he thinks he has the inside track on how to build a winning football club. This is despite having zero experience in sports ownership before Chelsea, and doing a crappy job so far.

All it proves to me is how completely out of touch Behdad and the Sporting Directors are, not just with the fanbase, but with reality, and football. They seem to be in their own world, where they’re all geniuses and all us fans are stupid, little people with no football knowledge who can be easily manipulated by PR. (We’re not by the way, we can all spot it a mile off, all the time).

This isn’t a slight on the project itself, as I’ve said before, the project is not the problem. I believe in this project, that’s one reason why this makes me so angry.

Strasbourg and Chelsea Women both seem to be running smoothly and doing well. Chelsea men is the only one of the BlueCo projects which isn’t operating efficiently and productively. Its the people running it who are the problem. Behdad is too hands on despite not being an expert in football, and the Sporting Directors, and GK guru Ben Roberts, simply are not in the elite category, have been majorly over-promoted and have way too much power and, it seems, zero accountability.

Enzo Maresca had this squad 2nd in the table half way through this season, and asked for a CB, a 6 and box 9 this window to ensure we achieve our goals. He’s got Trevoh Chalobah and we’ve spent the whole window looking for a winger. Our first choice, Mathys Tel, rejected us after Fabrizio Romano confirmed we’d spent an entire month chasing him. Maresca has a squad of players not entirely suited to his system, no depth in midfield, defence or up front, and had no choice but to overplay his best players.

He actually cares, he’s made an effort to connect with fans and shown he’s a great coach. He’s done nothing wrong and he should not be the next person under threat or losing his job. I won’t be calling for him to lose his job until some others lose theirs.

Whatever happens now, it should not be him losing his job or under scrutiny if we fail to meet our targets, but the people who hired him, failed to back him, the people who basically undermined him and set him up to fail. I actually don’t blame Mauricio Pochettino for walking out last summer honestly, because he also was not backed, asking for players in similar positions and never getting them.

But all seriousness, if they did remove Maresca, what serious manager would they think is going to take this job knowing this is how we treat head coaches, and working for people who’ve done such a poor job? No one with any credibility will take it. They’re off with the fairies.

If they somehow think they are doing a good job, they are living in a delusional fantasy, literally no one, I suspect no one in football either, privately anyway, thinks they are doing a good job. And neither is Behdad Eghbali.

He’s turning us into a joke. We don’t act, conduct ourselves, treat players or do business like an elite, well run, serious, ambitious football club. We just don’t.

In fact the perception I and other fans get, is the people running the mens side, whatever the truth, come across like overpromoted chancers who think they’re the best in the world, and act it in front of everyone, but actually aren’t.

Again, this is not personal, its regarding how they do business, the lack of accountability, and how these people are performing in their jobs. Behdad and the Sporting Directors might well be lovely people in private, and that’s fine, no issues with them as people. I wish nothing but good for them and their families.

But in their jobs, which they get paid a LOT of money to do, running the Chelsea mens side, they’re simply not performing at the level required, and the way the club seems to be run on the mens side is fundamentally flawed. Total power, zero accountability.

They need to seriously up their game, or it will cost Chelsea dearly on the pitch, and off it - because there are financial consequences of failure.

If we don’t meet our targets this season, Behdad and the Sporting Directors should know fans won’t turn on the manager first. They will show their displeasure directly to them.

Because actually, despite what they seem to think, we’re not stupid, we’re not easily placated, and we’re petty smart. We’ve been around football and Chelsea for a lot longer than them. We’ve seen winning squads and football clubs and what they look like, how they act, how they conduct themselves, how they build squads and how they’re run, and this isn’t it.

And be sure, we’ll make our voice heard if there's no accountability higher up.

We all know if we do hit our targets, they’ll take most of the public credit and pat themselves on the back for being perfect, and possibly Maresca won’t get the credit he deserves.

I’ve supported the club for 38 years, and I don’t think anyone in any position at the club has made me this angry before. I’m not just angry though, I’m really sad. This isn’t who Chelsea are and we can be so much better. There’s so much potential in this squad and in Maresca, and we need to build on it, but we’re not currently.

We’re Chelsea Football Club, but we’re not acting like it. It's embarrassing, sad and shameful. And I’m certain the fans will not be silent for much longer. Maybe it's time to start listening to us. Because many of us, frankly, have had enough.

The Score