The coach is not in the top ten – Newspaper Kommersant No. 57 (7502) dated 04/04/2023

The new owner of Chelsea, Todd Boehley, supported the trend that emerged under his predecessor, Roman Abramovich, to not hesitate to part with coaches who fail to achieve the desired result. Graham Potter has become the second mentor of the Londoners, fired during the current season. True, in his case, the reason for early resignation, without waiting for the close off-season, seems pretty obvious. Chelsea, which spent almost £600m on reinforcements in the last two transfer campaigns, looks much worse in the national championship not only from other giants, but also from Potter’s former club, the modest Brighton.

Chelsea have announced the sacking of head coach Graham Potter. IN joint statement Todd Boehley, head of the consortium, which last year I bought the club, which has owned it since 2003, Roman Abramovich, and his partner Bedad Egbali, dedicated to the event, expressed “deep respect” for Potter “as a coach and a person” and noted his “professionalism”. The rhetoric of the statement has already become the subject of numerous jokes in the British media, as it does not fit well with the fact that Graham Potter only had a chance to work at Chelsea for seven months. And this resignation also made the same media resources remember those times when the club belonged to the Russian predecessor of Beli.

One of the characteristics of Chelsea in the “Roman Abramovich era” was considered to be an exceptional “intolerance” to coaching failures, combined with generous investments.

In less than two decades, the position of a club mentor (if you count those who had the status of acting) had a chance to perform almost a dozen and a half specialists.

Moreover, Jose Mourinho and Guus Hiddink got it twice.

Meanwhile, the new owners not only supported the trend laid down by Roman Abramovich, but, one might say, strengthened it. During the current season, they spent an unprecedented amount of £559 million on newcomers in two transfer windows on newcomers. The January campaign was especially impressive, during which Chelsea acquired from Benfica for £107 million, setting an English Premier League record , the Argentinean Enzo Fernades, and for £89 million – the not-so-famous Ukrainian Mykhailo Mudrik.

At the same time, in just over six months, Chelsea have already fired two head coaches.

He started the season with Thomas Tuchel, inherited from Roman Abramovich, by Todd Böhli. With Tuchel, who led the Londoners to Champions League triumph in 2021, they said goodbye back in September, after the first failures, although they seemed quite normal for a team undergoing restructuring.

Parting with Graham Potter already seems much more logical, despite the fact that last year he seemed to have been given a colossal credit of trust. In order to lure Potter away, Chelsea had to pay Brighton compensation in the amount of £ 21.5 million, and a contract with him was signed for a period of as much as five years. His invitation from a modest club came as a surprise, given that under Roman Abramovich, Chelsea were accustomed to hiring mostly coaches with a colorful background. The experiment eventually steered towards something very much like a disaster.

Chelsea, with Potter, suffered a crushing failure in all domestic competitions.

He flew out of the FA Cup and the English League Cup, and in the national championship, in which he has ten matches left to play, he takes 11th place, 12 points behind Manchester United closing the Champions League zone. Far above Chelsea in the table are not only other English giants, but also Potter’s former club, which has been constantly criticized in recent times for strange tactical decisions. For example, all the leading English experts noted that in Saturday’s match with Aston Villa, which ended in a 0-2 home defeat for the Londoners, Potter used a scheme with three central defenders, but two of them were flank players – Mark Cucurella and Reece James. As a result, in many ways, their mistakes led to a loss.

The only bright spot in the season for the club is the Champions League.

In it, Chelsea, having defeated Borussia Dortmund, reached the quarterfinals and at this stage will meet last year’s tournament winner Real Madrid in April.

To prepare the Londoners for matches with Madrid will be appointed acting head coach Bruno Saltor, who worked at the headquarters of Graham Potter. However, it is quite obvious that Saltor is a temporary figure and in the near future Chelsea will be looking for a mentor with a higher rating.

Most British sources such as the BBC, The Guardian – they consider the favorite in the fight for the vacant post of the German Julian Nagelsmann, with whom Bayern terminated the contract in March. They draw attention both to his track record and to the fact that Chelsea’s sporting and technical directors Lawrence Stewart and Christopher Wivel collaborated with him at Leipzig. Along with Nagelsmann, there are a good dozen other specialists on the short lists of applicants for a coaching position at Chelsea in various publications. This is Mauricio Pochettino, and Luis Enrique, and Oliver Glazner, and Ruben Amorim, and Roberto De Zerbi.

Alexey Dospekhov