Chelsea fans have witnessed some truly baffling decisions being made at their club in the three-and-half years of BlueCo rule. They won’t stand for Cole Palmer leaving for Manchester United.
From signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to sacking Thomas Tuchel via re-hiring Frank Lampard and spending over £1bn on players and still not having a squad to mount a title challenge, the rap sheet is long and damning.
The most recent contentious call saw them sack their fourth permanent manager Enzo Maresca, shortly after he led them to two major-ish trophies in a debut season in which he also secured Champions League football, and replace him with a coach of even less renown in Liam Rosenior.
He’s off to a good start. Four wins from five, 10 goals, two clean sheets – not bad at all.
And although we’re as tempted as anyone to mock a manager who claps far too loudly for comfort, is presumably now combing LinkedIn for pearls of motivational wisdom and is the last person you would want to find in the kitchen at a party, we wouldn’t be sticking to our woke lefty agenda if we didn’t hope for the success of a young, black British manager.
But we doubt his appointment had anything to do with affirmative action. Like the vast majority of the decisions made by Todd Boehly/Behdad Eghbali/José E. Feliciano/Mark Walter/Hansjörg Wyss/Jonathan Goldstein/Barbara Charone/Lord Daniel Finkelstein/Paul Winstanley/Laurence Stewart/Joe Shields/Sam Jewell [delete as appropriate] it’s one that appears to have been made with a view to naysayers eventually hailing them as nonconformist geniuses.
Keep academy graduates as they’re the soul of the football club? Nah, sell them for pure profit and use that money to sign other players and flip them for more profit, or indeed – more typically – for a loss.
Sign footballers over the age of 25 for some experience? You’re having a laugh. No experience at all, please. Are the young signings good enough? Don’t know. Might be. Probably won’t be. Doesn’t matter. Ever heard of amortisation?
You could almost feel co-sporting directors Winstanley and Stewart reach near climax when, as Reece James lifted the Club World Cup, critics of their atypical process began to question whether the obsession with signing young players on absurdly long contracts might actually work.
The sh*t-eating we-told-you-so grins on their faces should Rosenior lead Chelsea to genuine, incontestable success after managerial stints at Hull City and Strasbourg makes us almost hope he doesn’t.
Reports suggest Palmer is ‘open’ to a move to Manchester United and ‘welcomes interest’ from the Red Devils because he’s ‘homesick’, but the timing of these rumours raises suspicion, arriving so soon after the change of manager.
Liam Rosenior has had “numerous conversations” with Palmer, which may indeed have been positive as the Blues boss suggests, but the England international wouldn’t be human if at least a part of him didn’t question how on earth the man looking to ease his mind over his future got this job over the world-class managers Chelsea used to attract and insist upon.
He’s played under Mauricio Pochettino, Maresca and now Rosenior at Stamford Bridge. That downward trend means it’s reasonable for him to question which Jupiler Pro League manager will be in charge next year.
If you were to ask Palmer if he would rather have Rosenior in charge or Xabi Alonso, Xavi or other available managers there’s only going to be one answer. He might turn out to be wrong – Rosenior may end up doing a better job than any alternative – but the problem Chelsea have in the short term is in convincing Palmer to stick around long enough to find out whether that’s the case. Rosenior simply doesn’t have the back-catalogue to prove it’s worth trusting in his process.
And although a move to Manchester United may therefore seem like an odd choice as they’re set on an inexorable DNA-enforced path to Michael Carrick’s permanent appointment at the end of the season, Palmer can feel safe in the knowledge that if that doesn’t work then United will look to hire the manager they believe to be the best in class, as was the case with Ruben Amorim, poor decision though that turned out to be,
Chelsea fans would begrudgingly accept Palmer moving to Real Madrid. They’re a bigger fish. But Chelsea have won two Premier Leagues and two Champions Leagues since Manchester United won either of those trophies. They’ve been the laughing stock to put Chelsea’s recent struggles into perspective.
Palmer – despite an injury-hit season – remains the main reason to be cheerful as a Chelsea fan. While he remains so too does the hope of one of the big trophies in the not-too-distant future, false though that hope may be while one of the biggest clubs in the world continues to put their trust in managers without the experience to merit their position.
Lose him to Manchester United and BlueCo will be losing a key piece of armour protecting them from the wrath of the Chelsea fans, which is just barely being kept at bay.
