"If the data says this is good, then we need to change the algorithm. I have never felt so disconnected to my club."

Contribution article by lifelong Chelsea fan and season ticket holder, Danny Windsor...

Article by Danny Windsor

I wrote an article just under a month ago on the situation of the club and my thoughts as a fan of 25 years, and since then we have seen zero improvement and if anything, like the majority of the club we have regressed!

I stated a month ago I thought we hadn’t improved on last season and I didn’t think that Poch was doing good enough. A month on and I now know that we haven’t improved from last season, and I know for a fact Poch isn’t doing a good enough job!

In my whole time of supporting Chelsea, I have never felt so disconnected to a manager or my football club. Supporting Chelsea and watching football used to be enjoyable, a passion and a break from day to day stresses of life. But now it does nothing but stress me out more. I was in the Matthew Harding Stand for the Leeds game and it was a strange atmosphere/ It was a mixture of pure disbelief and anger.

Regardless of what had been going on at the club over the last 10 years, it has always been full of excitement and a mindset of let's cheer the team on and try to be positive, but on Wednesday it was full of expectancy that we would put in a dodgy performance. I have never seen the stand full of the most passionate fans, so disenchanted with the club.

It has been reported by a lot of credible journalists that the owners and directors look at the thoughts of the fans in the ground as a barometer and judge if a manager should go. This is a message for the ownership and the board - the reason that you haven't heard more boo’s and more anger is because we are becoming numb to the disappointment and mediocrity. We are all so disconnected from the manager, the players, the board, the ownership and the club.

The manager - He continues to insult our intelligence, make excuses for performances, and tell us that the team and his staff are doing an amazing job, all of this in a month where we didn’t win a final against a team that in extra time had players playing in PL2 a few weeks ago. We completely regressed from the minute the manager spoke to the players and we looked scared of losing instead of trying to win. We then only just beat a championship side riddled with injuries and we had to use every one of our first team players including 5 off the bench to only just nick it in the 90th minute. In the second half we were dominated for 45 minutes, and again the team regressed after a half time team talk. We then drew to Brentford, a team sat in 16th who were riddled with injuries and saw another game where we regressed after a halftime team talk and where very lucky to get a point. This was then described by Poch as a good point for a team that has played 3 games in the last week and is knackered. This excuse of being tired doesn’t wash with anyone in the fan base, you have refused to use any of your world class academy talent, haven't used a player you recalled from a successful loan, and only made 2 subs after the 71st minute. Poch, YOU are in control of the squad so utilise it. Collectively with the board you also decided to send Andrey Santos on loan to Strasbourg, even with Romeo Lavia and Lesly Ugochukwu’s injuries. This a player that you used extensively in the preseason. In no way is this good enough and is a person in complete self preservation mode.

For me, his demeanor in the press, the excuses he gives, the amount of deflection that is done, and the narrative that we are doing a good job is rubbing off on these players. We are 11th in the league after 26 games and in the bottom half of the table. WAKE UP POCH this is not a good job.

Poch was meant to be brought in to nurture young players and improve them, but I am confident in saying we haven’t seen any player improve under his coaching and his use and treat of players such as Mykhailo Mudryk have been nothing short of laughable, pathetic and illogical to name a few superlatives. How can a player score vs Fulham, Arsenal, Newcastle, Crystal Palace and Leeds to only be benched in the following games and most of them then get 0 mins off the bench? Sorry, I must have forgotten he needs to feel the pain of not playing instead of building momentum and confidence.

The players – I have some sympathy for the players as I don’t believe the tactics, positions or in game management from the manager put them in the best position to succeed. But you have to take responsibility for your performances when you are on the pitch, the amount simple basics that you would see in a local Sunday league game that are lacking on a game to game basis or aren’t done consistently is worrying! How can we misplace so many passes, how can we miss control so many unpressured passes, how can we miss so many guilt edge chances and how many individual mistakes in defence can we make? Is this a lack of quality, a lack of execution or is it on the manager? I am starting to believe it is all 3 and the squad cost close to a billion pounds.

The board – How can we spend nearly a billion pounds, hire 3 managers and be 2 years in to “project” and still be this poor? I went into it in a lot of detail in my last article but to summarise, he amount of players that are simply not up to Chelsea's standard is scary. The fact we have employed 3 managers now and all have looked lost and tactically antipet is crazy. Also what improvement has actually come from these 2 years? The most alarming thing is how many players can we say have either improved, been a success or increased in value? Gusto, Palmer, and maybe Petrovic?

The owners – This is all under your watch, your hires and your direction. Is this the standard you are trying to achieve and is this the project you wanted? We were told that you wanted to be more collaborative and you wanted to win. As fans we have 0 idea what the plan is apart from buying young players, we don’t know what objectives you are trying to achieve in the short, medium, or long term, and we get nothing but media briefed stories about how we are looking data on buying players and performance of the team. As I said in the title of the article “If the data says this is good then the algorithm is wrong”

The club – The fans have 0 to associate with the club at the moment, no players we have relationships with, most go down the tunnel straight after fulltime regardless of if we win lose or draw, which shows no appreciation for the supporters who spend their time and money to come and this is bearing in mind it isn’t a small amount of time and isn’t a small amount of money to travel up and down the country to support the team. I don’t believe that spending 5 minutes to clap us is unreasonable. How can a player like Thiago Silva who has played over 700 games take the time to clap the fans but players starting their careers and have no relationships with the fans don’t? This goes for the manager too as he hasn’t even acknowledged us during his whole tenure. We have no results to get excited by, if you even look at the cup run, the only good sides we beat were Brighton and Newcastle. In the Newcastle game, we were less than 2 minutes away from going out and apart from a mistake from Tripper, we would have been. Lastly, we have no understanding of the project that you are trying to do so have no belief that it is the right thing to do. If we did we would maybe be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel but currently, we are suffering in the dark.

Data - We are told the club is run on data for everything so let's look into a few pieces of data which will hopefully paint a picture for the ownership.

We have been told by the manager that we are not the old Chelsea, and we shouldn’t expect to be the club we were before. I am going to assume he was speaking about under Roman Abramovich and when we were one of the best sides in the world.

So, let's dive into before Roman owned the club and the 7 seasons before Roman. The lowest position in the league we finished was 6th and we won 6 trophies. So are we meant to ignore the last 28 years of the club's history and set our standards to then? WE ARE 11Th, it is not acceptable.

Let's compare between this season and last. In the summer we saw the arrival of 12 players who cost around £400 million, and we got rid of 17 players deemed not good enough or didn’t want to play for us anymore. After 26 games last year we were 11th with 35 points and a goal difference of -1, this year we have 36 with a 1+ goal difference. So after all of the change, all the money spent and year on we are 1 point and 2 goal difference better off. Is this the project we need to believe in?

I mentioned above that Poch’s HT team talks have seen us regress and get worse in a lot of our games. I have put below the tables for the first and second half, and we are 15 points worse in the second half compared to the first which is pretty compelling! I am not stupid to think this is purely down to Poch’s halftime time team talks but it is a good barometer to show his team talks and tactical tweaks do not achieve the desired result.

Boehly and Eghbali Act Now! – It is not too late to save our season this year and set us up for next year, and this is actually the perfect time to do so but currently all we are doing is wating time. We need to;

1. Sack Poch now – We have 9 days until Newcastle and then 6 days after that until Leicester, after that we have the international break. This is the time for the interim manager to work with the players and provide the boost we need.

2. Sign an interim manager. Jose is right there to get us to the summer, rejuvenate the fan base, get some belief into the fans, a connection to someone within the club and instill a winners mentality. Jose manager and JT as assistant is the perfect short term solution. If you don’t want to go for Jose for some reason, there is Lopetegui and Flick there also!

3. Hire an experienced Sporting Director or Football CEO – If you are not going to sack the sporting directors which is looks like you are reluctant to do then at least provide them some assistance with an experienced person to sit above them. Micheal Edwards is right there, you have spoken to him before and offered him this role. He isn’t joining Liverpool right now because he wants this type of role, give him everything he wants and sign him!

4. New manager - Start the recruitment of the manager for the summer now and appoint them as soon as humanly possible. Let's not wait until the beginning of July like we did this year lets plan the new season early. De Zerbi, Alonso, or Amorim are all there to be appointed. You need to have a manager who gets the best out of the squad, has the right mentality, and is tactically astute.

5. Player recruitment – Abandon this under 25 only requirement rule and sign some experience to complement the young talent you have signed and have in the academy. Most importantly, decide on your main targets in collaboration with the new manager! Make sure you have the main ones are in for the start of the preseason. Don’t try and haggle for a better price and pay more than the original asking price after the preseason is nearly done!

6. Project – Owners and the new Football CEO come out and address the fans on the plan and the objectives you have set so we can get behind what you are doing.

7. Fan First – Ensure the club is run in a way that the fans are the most important. Make sure the players, the manager and yourselves show your appreciation for our support consistently. We are not expecting over the top or fake acts of appreciation, but clapping the fans every game should be a bare minimum for all the coaching staff and players.

I believe that if you do the above there is no reason why we can't finish the season strong and return to the top over time.

As fans, we are not deluded and expect that we will win the league next year, but we need to see progression. Most true fans would be accepting of challenging for the Europa League qualification and the edge of Champions League spots next season. The following season in a proper battle for the Champions League spots. Then the following season look to challenge for for league.

All we want is success for this club and to have something to believe in. I promise that if you achieve the above, the fan base will be less toxic and more supportive in defeats, the atmosphere in the ground and online will improve 10 fold and as a club as a whole, we will be better for it.

I appreciate that everyone is working hard and trying to do their best but at certain points, you have to reflect, accept you are wrong, and pivot to a different way of approaching things. As Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

Thanks for reading and as always Up the Chelsea and keep the blue flag flying high!

Danny Windsor