04 Mar 2024 23:29:23
There are so many things wrong at Chelsea that they have a cascading effect on everything else below it:
1) The investment in players. We have bought far too many young players and placed unrealistic expectations on them, creating huge imbalance in the squad. Rather than learn from this mistake, we’ve continued with this ‘strategy’ for two years. All those young players with great potential to develop are in a weird situation in that they are nailed on first teamers so aren’t motivated to fight for a place but also shouldn’t be in the first team in the first place. So it creates a bunch of pressure for a group of players who are less motivated to succeed.
2. Chelsea’s expectations: there are a few clubs in the unique position where they previously won tons of things and the fans now expect wins like ‘the good old days’. See also: Man Utd. This puts a bad type of pressure into each performance as the players fear their own fans turning on them pretty quickly if a game isn’t going well. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen elsewhere, but it happens less at other smaller clubs.
3. Other clubs hate us. We aren’t a team that casual supporters tend to like because we’ve spent so much money in both the A’movich and Boehly eras. Rightly or wrongly, we are seen as the poster child of everything that’s wrong with football currently. This creates a lot of negative headlines and certain pundits are only too happy to jump on us when we are playing badly and don’t credit us when we are good. This has got to be bad for morale.
4. Wage structure: the idea of getting paid less with more performance-related bonuses is probably good for the club right now, but piles on the misery for the players. I think right now, they’ll be thinking ‘damn, I could’ve gone to x or y club on the same money and less pressure. ’ I don’t think it’s a good motivational tool.
5. Long contracts - a lot of players’ contracts will expire after seven years. Again, not much of a motivator to perform once you’re on a cash cow contract until 2030.
6. Injuries - a mix of poor management of player fitness and bad luck. Hard to tell what is what.
05 Mar 2024 03:52:14
Fantastic post dantheblue. I was originally very optimistic with Boehly as I thought errors were made in the abramovic era. However, it has been utterly disastrous and they're not learning from there mistakes. A billion pounds should have cemented this clubs spot in the top 4 wigh many trophies for a decade however it's put us from 3rd to 11th. The 'advice' they've taken has been shambling and I'd trust many more people on here to do a better job with the finances, and I'm not even joking with that comment. Put Tomb in charge, and we'd have bought better players.
05 Mar 2024 07:07:45
I wouldn’t have done a better job but I would have done a different job and no doubt we would now be in the bottom three.
Jut a few points from the Danetheblue post.
I cannot see any player being less motivated if they have a five year contract or a seven year contract. I think motivation is a self discipline/ desire.
I believe strongly in performance related contracts. I also believe that workers have to think that performance bonuses are achievable.
Strangely in London I think Spurs are the most disliked club by football supporters. Across the country I think it’s probably Liverpool and Utd who are disliked the most.
The current crop of football fans probably have higher expectations than older fans and we live in a society with limited patience and an overwhelming desire to name and blame. I want success every season but I there are no guarantees in football and over the years I’ve witnessed lots of failure as well as success.
The signing of lots of young players by our new owners is an interesting development. For me it wasn’t about the age but more about how many new signings have been made but they were left with contracts expiring in several key areas.
05 Mar 2024 11:27:27
Agree with a lot of the above.
Motivation is an interesting concept it should be a given
A few years ago I played about 15 mins in a charity game to raise funds for a community project mainly against ex birmingham and villa players, we were a cobbled together side we knew we were in trouble when they celebrated every goal and it really appeared to matter to them.
Think motivation is in built to the pysche of the players they all want to win, there are obviously degrees of hard work some probably put in more hard yards than others.
Having said that we could do with an obvious motivator / senior pro on the pitch so the crowd can see how much they care, not sure who that is or if he exists.
05 Mar 2024 13:49:31
Selling yourself short there Tom. Think you'd have more sense in your transfer strategy than we did in ours.
05 Mar 2024 14:49:22
Yeah, thanks - I don't doubt our players are motivated. I just think there's a ton of stuff that weighs on us like an anchor on and off the field and nudges us below the level of other premier league sides. Mourninho was a master of harnessing this feeling and making us feel like underdogs and that it was 'us against the world'. Although if that didn't work, he just found a scapegoat and blamed them ;-)
It's a bit like Dave Brailsford's incremental gains idea in reverse. If you concentrate on all the little things that give you 1% advance over your competition, that soon ads up to 5-10% advantage. I think what's happening with Chelsea is that there are a bunch of these little 1% differences across different areas of the club that are negatively impacting us, which results in a 5-10% drop in form. Against Premier League clubs, that's massive and leads to our erratic form.
Man Utd are the same. They chop and change managers, but they haven't solved the structural problems that are the underlying issue.
05 Mar 2024 16:22:48
Dan, you make a very good point about small differences and attention to detail.
Small margins can win or lose a game and there have been occasions over the last two seasons when players have switched off. Part of that can be put down to “learning a trade” but it can also become normalised if not worked on as a skill.