The squad building at centre-back has been terrible. It MUST be addressed in January and the summer

The negligence shown to the CB position by the club is utterly ridiculous

Poor defending and inconsistency, the constant patterns we’re seeing this season. No one is surprised anymore when we barely concede any chances to Spurs away and win comfortably, then draw away to Qarabag and concede two goals only 4 days later.

To me, the diagnosis of this is actually pretty simple. Its got nothing to do with tactics, or our attacking personnel. We’re scoring about 2 or more goals per game generally, one of the top scoring teams in the PL and in Europe. Liam Delap is now back as our 9 and played well against Qarabag, and Cole Palmer could be back for our games after the international break.

The real issue is our squad building at centre-back. Its absolutely horrendous. In 3 years of this ownership, we’ve only spent over £50m on a CB once, and the next highest CB signing is Axel Disasi. Forget last summer, we’ve had 7 windows to get this right, and failed spectacularly.

Trevoh Chalobah is a great squad player, Tosin Adarabioyo was an opportunity signing on a free, who did a good squad job last year and added some experience, but has been consistently poor this season. With our best CB, Levi Colwill out for the season, Wesley Fofana only playing a few games so far, Badiashile only two (where he’s been great), Josh Acheampong is our best CB of those available every game. And at 19 its unfair for him to shoulder that responsibility.

Wesley Fofana was superb against Spurs and Wolves, both games in which we kept clean sheets, and Badiashile was in the two games he was fit. If these two could stay fit, they could start at least one game a week together, and Josh and Trev could be the other partnership. But the problem is the former two don’t stay fit long enough, and for a club who wants to compete at the top level, this can’t go on.

It should have been addressed last season when head coach Enzo Maresca asked for a CB but it was ignored by the Sporting Directors, and he was fobbed off with Trevoh Chalobah, who actually did well. But shouldn’t take much common sense to know we needed another CB who could come in and start at a high level in the Premier League and Champions League. Marc Guehi, Jarrad Branthwaite, were both options, and there were others.

Just giving up on CBs after Dean Huijsen went to Real Madrid and we were quoted big for Branthwaite, wasn’t good enough or how a big club operates. If they’d been ruthless enough, one of Tosin or Trev could have been sold if we were signing a truly elite CB, and we’ve seen that wouldn’t have stopped Josh getting a lot of minutes.

And there’s the rub. The two Sporting Directors aren’t ruthless enough and can’t get the really big deals done (they needed hand holding for our two £100m plus signings). They can get £30-60m deals done, fine. But the big deals for big players, they’ve not handled well. And the squad building to leave us in this state with our CBs is shocking.

Of course, the manager always gets the blame from half the fans, but honestly, can you imagine Pep or Klopp doing much better with this CB cohort? Its a mess and it needs to be rectified in the January window. Maresca has little influence over recruitment and he’s not been given the tools to do his job, even more so given the key injuries.

We have some young CBs, like Aaron Anselmino and Mamadou Sarr, who could be part of the squad in future, and that could still happen.

Overall, we need to sell the CBs we have who can’t help us, either due to injury or quality, keep the likes of Levi Colwill and Josh Acheampong, sign at least one elite CB, and then have two other CBs. One of Wes, Trev or Tosin, plus one of Anselmino and Sarr. I think that’s entirely doable over the next two windows.

I’m not hearing any excuses this time, top CB recruitment and squad building needs to happen and we need to be ruthless and get it done. I’m certain Dave Fallows, given his success at squad building at a big club, will see the issue already, the one our two self acknowledged geniuses couldn’t see in nearly 3 years, one most fans saw coming well over a year ago.

I can’t criticise the manager when he has so many key players injured and he’s not been given a good enough squad in key areas. He’s operating with a hand behind his back and as per usual, being left out to dry by the people above him. What’s worse is so many fans are falling for the Sporting Directors trap again, and blaming the manager instead of them, the people who should be held to account.

Maresca’s achievements last season should have earned him proper backing and its about damn time they trusted his judgement. He was clearly correct about us needing a top CB, and that needs to happen in the January window. If it doesn’t, I wouldn’t blame him for walking out in the summer, and good luck to anyone who replaces him, because they’d likely not be getting backed either.

If they want Maresca to stay and above all for Chelsea to be successful, the club needs to get this done and sort out the squad building overall too. No more excuses.

To leave the CB situation like it is and have ignored it so long, is gross negligence and total incompetence.

The Score