What's up with Chelsea?

Hi, I’ve still been pretty sick with the flu, so again, I’m sorry this took so long. I do think I’m getting better even if this cough won’t shift, so the disruption shouldn’t last, hopefully.

The perils of writing an article while the team keeps playing games.

I had a whole argument about how much Chelsea were improving, how they were clearly developing into a more coherent side. Then they go and shit the bed and the narrative completely shifts. Ah, well. At least it gives us some things to talk about. Chelsea are now eight points behind Arsenal at the top of the table, but they continue to be a team with some positives.

We all know how much BlueCo made a mess of things early on after buying the club from Roman Abramovich. Obviously, they’ve spent a decent amount money to fix it, and we’ll get into what that means later on. But on the pitch, they’re pushing high up the Premier League table with the youngest squad (weighted by minutes played) in England’s top flight. That’s exciting.

Their xG difference per game of +0.47 is third best in the league, albeit a fair way off Arsenal and Man City. That’s mainly powered by a very strong attack and a slightly iffy defence (more a story in the xG than the actual goals scored and conceded). This is all, to be honest, pretty similar to last season. Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea have pretty clear strengths and shortcomings at this point, and I don’t think we’re going to see something radically different over time. They’re going to get better or worse based on the players. We saw how much they seemed to fall apart when Maresca heavily rotated against Leeds. So let’s look at how the players have changed this season compared to last, and what difference it’s made.

Levi Colwill played the vast majority of the Blues’ league games last season. This year, he hasn’t kicked a ball yet thanks to an ACL injury. Trevoh Chalobah has been a regular at centre back, with Tosin Adarabioyo and Wesley Fofana each getting minutes next to him. The full backs are unchanged, with Marc Cucurella an ever-present at left back whereas Reece James and Malo Gusto split minutes on the right.

Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández played almost every game together in midfield last season. They’re still playing a lot, but often joined by a third central midfielder, with James finding a new lease of life in a different role. That’s been possible because Cole Palmer, who demands to play at number ten and thus in a shape that makes room for him, keeps picking up injuries. Palmer is finally available again, so we’ll see how that impacts those just behind him.

Wingers Noni Madueke and Jadon Sancho have both now left the club, as have Christopher Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson (albeit on loan). That means Pedro Neto is the only part of Chelsea’s attack to play a lot of games both this season and last. They’ve struggled to find consistency in terms of attacking lineups. João Pedro and Pedro Neto are the ones playing a lot, while Estêvão Willian, Alejandro Garnacho, Jamie Gittens and Liam Delap have played here and there. The good news is that this attack should surely improve once Palmer is at the heart of it.

Depth is definitely a concern right now. Chelsea can barely put out a competent midfield even when all players are fit. Caicedo, James and Fernández clearly need an energetic and reliable alternative to rotate in and out of the side. It’s possible Andrey Santos matures into this player, but even then I still think they’d need someone else, especially if James has to play an extended period at right back.

In the forward line, meanwhile, most are young enough to improve and you maybe don’t want to rock the boat with a marquee senior signing. At the same time, Liam Delap clearly isn’t good enough even when he is fit, which isn’t very often. But they’ve already signed so many players, which brings us to the ever present question.

You can’t talk about Chelsea without talking about finance. Premier League clubs recently voted to replace the existing rules around financial constraints with a “Squad Cost Ratio”, limiting club spending as a percentage of revenue. Assuming Chelsea continue to qualify for European competitions, they would be allowed to spend up to 70% of their revenues on “squad costs” before beginning to break the rules.

As the Swiss Ramble wrote in his inevitably excellent guide to the changes, Chelsea would have breached SCR rules over the previous monitoring period had the rules been in place. The Blues were able to get around the old PSR rules last time by selling assets such as the women’s team, but this doesn’t count for the new rules. “Despite impressive player trading and decent revenue”, he explained, “significant investment in the squad took the Blues’ SCR to 81%, which would be 11% worse than the 70% target”.

Chelsea would have to be all the way at 30% above the target to suffer sporting sanctions, though continual breaches will apparently cause this buffer zone to shrink. BlueCo might be willing to accept paying a few fines in the early years of SCR, but they’re eventually going to have to make sure they’re under the limit. I’ve said this before, but I do, now, think we’re coming to the end of Chelsea’s big spending years. They won’t enter an era of austerity, but it will be more targeted and less “buy all the kids”, I think. None of this would be the worst thing in the world from a sporting perspective.

It… does not beg the question becuase that phrase means something else, but: what is Chelsea’s project now? It’s been about buying up young talent to develop and grow in value, but they have to pivot at some point, right? The logical strategy would be to focus on a smaller number of players a little closer to their peak years, to enhance rather than overhaul what they have. I found Chelsea’s summer really bizarre because they decided not to do this, instead rolling the dice on some newer young players.

I, personally, would target three or four players next summer, in positions like central midfield and upfront, somewhere around the age 23-26 bracket. I’d give Maresca until the end of the season, but if it’s more of the same, look for a manager who can coach a more coherent playing style and really work to improve this existing crop of young talent. I’d be looking at seriously challenging for the league title in 2-3 years, which means focusing on a squad that will start peaking around then. I wouldn’t mess around with more young players and I’d try to trim things in places to better meet financial rules. But I don’t know what BlueCo will do. All of this seems pretty common sense to me. I’m not playing 5D chess like they are. We’ll see what happens.