23/24 Season Review and Summer Preview - Part One

FAN VIEW: By Danny Windsor

This is a contribution article by Chelsea season ticket holder and SPTC community member Danny Windsor.

I wrote a couple of articles this season about my feelings on the club, the players and the manager situation; so I thought now everything is over it would be good to reflect on the season as a whole and what I think the club needs to go to the next level. This will be a 2-part series.

23/24 Season

There is no hiding the fact that the first half of the season was very iffy with some good performances but not many results. However, in my opinion this flipped towards the back end of the season. Chelsea managed to find a way to get results even when not playing particularly well - Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth come to mind. This is certainly positive for the future as to be able to compete for big things you need to know how to win ugly. For me, one of the biggest reasons we were able to start doing this is because Mauricio Pochettino actually began to set the team up with some structure and clear tactics, which bodes well for next season because I think the style of football Enzo Maresca plays really suits the squad but more on that in a little bit.

We saw real improvements and some consistency from Nicolas Jackson, Moises Caicedo, Malo Gusto, and Noni Madueke to a degree in the second half of the season which puts us in a great position to kick on next season. Overall, all of our players will be better next season after playing a year in the premier league, the experience we went through last season, and being an year older. The positive side of missing key players like Reece James, Ben Chilwell, Wesley Fofana and Christopher Nkunku is it meant that the younger and less experienced players had to step up and play more which will benefit them this season coming.

We actually managed to return a lot of the long-term injuries towards the back end of the season too which should mean they are all fighting fit at the start of preseason and ready to compete at a top level come the start of the season. I think its only Fofana that is at risk of not being fit for the start of preseason.

I have to say that I gave the sporting directors a lot of stick this season and I am certainly not completely happy with the job they are doing at the club, and this summer window and the way the manager performs this year will probably be the deciding factor on if they are successful here and realistically if they keep their jobs moving forward. However, last summer they sold fantastically well and have trimmed the wage bill down massively which is allowing us to continue to invest again this summer even without Champions league again this season coming.

I will give the club and the sporting director a lot of respect too for starting to build really clear and good departments within the club. Bringing in a new medical department should hopefully bring dividends next season. I also really like the appointment of Bernardo Cueva, it is a shrewd appointment; Chelsea were midtable for goals conceded and scored from set pieces and this is an area we need to improve on. We saw last season how many games Arsenal won from goals from set pieces and how the Carvajal goal changed the UCL final. This is something where small improvements make massive difference over a whole season.

They managed to get great money for a lot of players that a lot of the fan base wanted out last summer and managed to get good money for a couple of players like Mason Mount for example. At the time Chelsea fans wanted to keep him but in hindsight it looks like he wanted to leave as much and we wanted to sell and it's not like he had a stellar season and we missed anything this season. When I was having a look into the finances and the wage bill, they managed to remove over £150m in wages off the books and only added £50m back on with the replacement signings meaning Chelsea are £100m better off every year. This helps massively with FFP and PSR meaning we can invest heavily again this summer, the key now is to invest in the right areas and players!

New Manager

I will admit when I heard the news that Enzo Maresca was the new coach my initial reaction was I wasn’t happy with the appointment. I think it is a massive risk at a very key point in our project. I also don’t think that he was the preferred route or number one target for a large part of the success planning or manager recruitment process. For me, I would have gone for a more established manager in a Roberto De Zerbi or a Ruben Amorim. However, the reports are they weren’t what we were looking for and there were things we couldn’t agree with them on.

If you look at Maresca from a purely tactical and philosophy perspective I think he is a very very good fit for the squad. He will provide even more structure, control, and build up that for large parts of the season last year we severely lacked. In theory, we should be able to see Chelsea dominate games and take more control of games next season. A massively concerning factor from last year was in games like Leicester, Leeds, Burnley, and Sheffield Utd, even though we got results in some of those we never looked in control at all and at large parts we actually had play dictated to us. Looking back on where we finished and where we could of got the 4 extra points needed, winning only the Burnley and Sheffield Utd games would of put us in 5th and put serious pressure on Aston Villa for the last Champions League spot.

The negative side of the appointment is all the intangibles and off the pitch side which worries me a lot. He’s never had control of a bigger dressing room, more egos, never managed a top-flight game, not one game in Europe before and never come up against the best tacticians in football. He did come up against Chelsea, Liverpool, and Bournemouth last season at Leicester where he got a 0-0 draw but went through on penalties vs Bournemouth, and then 2 good performances but 2 losses vs Chelsea and Liverpool. So there is some positives to take from that and I am hoping that his experiences as a player and also his year with Pep Guardiola gave him a good understanding of how top-level football is and gave him a good platform to build on.

The risk from a club side is that this appointment puts the Sporting Director’s and Owners under the firing line a lot more than it does Enzo. At the end of the day, you cant fault his ambition and also every single one of us in this community would take a massive pay rise and jump up in role if you were offered it.

Enzo Maresca will have my fall support and patience like Pochettino and every other manager gets at the start of there tenure. My biggest advice to him would be to get the fans onside and you will get a lot more time and patience than your predecessor. We as fans are not expecting you to kiss the badge, to run up and down the touchline and to pretend you love the club from minute one! However, if you clap and thank the fans, talk with the right mindset in the media, and certainly don’t insult us in the media, you will be doing much more than the last couple of managers and will create that bond with the fans that has been seriously seriously lacking since Thomas Tuchel left.

Part 2 will be this summer's plans and how the squad should look, and that will be out on Tuesday!

By Danny Windsor