Chelsea fans have a right to be frustrated, changes are needed!

The players aren’t the cause of the issues we have, and I want to support them to finish the season as well as we can

Words aren’t adequate to express how I feel about Chelsea right now. Anger, frustration, sadness, disappointment, all of the above. Seeing a team without character or belief, whose heads go down as soon as they go behind or concede a goal.

Its even more disappointing as this team has shown character before, coming from behind to win many times. But a combination of mental/physical fatigue, from 114 games in 90 odd weeks with only a two week break and short preseason, plus internationals, added to weak squad depth and a total loss of confidence and belief, have conspired to land us in this situation.

Everyone is angry. We all want a competitive Chelsea team who play for the shirt, show pride and character and win football matches. Whether or not you agree with the protests or think they’ll work, they are ultimately happening because people care about their club and want the best for it.

But I’m seriously considering scaling back on social media for a few weeks - of course, if there’s big news or big results, I’ll likely show up and comment - but at the very least cutting down. Because to me, its gone beyond anger with many people. On social media especially, it’s becoming toxic.

I think every fan agrees that things need to change at the club. The Sporting Directors, Head Coach, recruitment, it all needs changing. I was so angry after Sunday and I’m still frustrated.

But its going too far with some people. I’ve seen people on Twitter twisting facts to suit negative agendas, making up quotes (even ESPN picked up on a fake quote and published it), editing videos to make them sound like co-owner Behdad Eghbali said something he didn’t, flat out abusing people who have a different take on the issues at the club, others approaching everything with a negative slant, no context, no objectivity, less focus on accuracy.

If people think doing that kind of thing is going to get their views listened to or effect change, they’re living in a fantasy land. Aggression, inaccuracy, fake quotes, abuse, insults, aren’t going to change a thing. All they will do is divide fans amongst ourselves, and get our views ignored even more when we need to be heard.

I’m certainly feeling less safe to share my views for fear of being abused, insulted and labelled falsely. I’ve been labeled a “Clearlake enabler” (which if you’ve read my recent posts here you’ll know is a complete joke), and even a “fake fan”. Given I’ve been going to Chelsea games since 1988 and seen us get relegated and fight relegation regularly, and my family have been supporting Chelsea since the 1950s, that’s an absolute joke, not to mention hugely disrespectful. And it does no good at all.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of letting my anger around Chelsea get ahead of me, and I ended up nearly losing a friendship over it. Thankfully we resolved things, but I regret the whole episode. So I’m not going to make that mistake again.

I’m as angry about things at Chelsea as anyone, but I’d rather not participate in social media dialogue when things are this toxic. Fans should be able to share different views without vile abuse or being called a fake fan.

My own view is, in short summary (and maybe I’ll unpack this more in coming articles), this:

Despite appearances, in my view the project has not failed. Its been sabotaged. Other projects similar to ours have succeeded - because they hired best in class sporting directors and head coaches, and allowed them to do their jobs.

In my view, we’ve not hired absolute best in class people to run the football side, and we’re now seeing the consequences. There’s been poor recruitment and squad building, and some poor appointments throughout the football hierarchy at the club.

There is a core at Chelsea now though. Despite performing abysmally recently, this squad has, in the last 11 months, beaten and outplayed some of the best teams in Europe, won two trophies and shown huge potential. But the wider recruitment and squad building haven’t been good enough.

Our depth is not good enough, we don’t have enough leaders and fighters, and not enough established talent. In short, the Sporting Directors haven’t done a good enough job, and head coach Liam Rosenior, is sadly not the level required at Chelsea.

I’d also add though, that after 114 games in 90 weeks plus internationals, and only a two week break and short pre-season, players are mentally and physically fatigued, and low on confidence. That’s certainly one big reason performance levels have dipped, but it doesn’t excuse just how bad we’ve been recently, and the lack of character shown by the team.

Bottom line, in my view there needs to be a change in the football structure, more specifically, the head coach and Sporting Directors, and a vast improvement in recruitment. It’s simply non-negotiable at this point.

We need to sign more PL proven, plug in and play top quality players, with emotional maturity, physicality and leadership/fighting qualities. Two top PL proven CBs, a top PL proven midfielder and attacker, in addition to Mike Penders, Geovany Quenda and Emanuel Emegha coming in, alongside a proven, established manager (they can still be young, they just need to be proven), and the squad and club will be a lot stronger and more competitive.

I know people have a go at the wage structure and I absolutely get it. My view is that although it can probably be tweaked and have a little more flexibility, we don’t have the money to pay multiple players 300k per week base salaries, not if we want to be sustainable. If we do and the signings don’t work, we’ve seen with multiple players recently that its tough to move those players on.

We need to sell about 8-9 players at least, and upgrade on them in the summer. Do I have faith we will upgrade successfully? Frankly, no, not right now.

I think Chelsea fans have every right to be skeptical of recruitment, and about promises made by the club, after the last two summers. They have to deliver this summer, simple as that.

I think everyone just needs the season to be over as soon as possible. Try and get three wins and a couple of draws from the last 6 games and that should at least guarantee us Europa league football, and who knows, if Liverpool are inconsistent, maybe there’s a vain hope we can finish 5th. I’m not even certain we’ll beat Leeds in the FA Cup right now, and even if we do, I’d expect us to lose badly in an FA Cup final to Manchester City, the favourites.

Get the season over as quickly as we can and then get on with making the big changes that are needed.

In the meantime, I want to stay away from the abuse and toxicity I see on Twitter, it does me or no one any good. It doesn’t help Chelsea. It doesn’t change anything. No matter how angry we are, taking it to abusive, hateful levels is counter productive. I include myself in that too.

All we can do as fans is ensure our voices are heard, make smart, educated arguments about what we want to change (I’m almost certain Clearlake aren’t selling Chelsea anytime soon, so to me that’s a pointless agenda), and cheer on the players.

The players aren’t the cause of the issues we have, and I want to support them to finish the season as well as we can. Then we can let the dust settle, see where we are and hope against hope the club keeps their promises and learn their lessons.

The Score