There does not seem to be a way back for Liam Rosenior at Chelsea after the 3-0 loss to Brighton & Hove Albion. The manager openly questioned the desire of his players after the game while speaking to the media. When that happens, there is only one way things end. And that is with the manager getting sacked. Now, it remains to be seen how long BlueCo are willing to postpone the inevitable.
Even a few days back, there was talk of giving Rosenior the next pre-season. That seems to be pretty pointless right now. He has lost five in a row in the Premier League without scoring a goal. The first time that has happened since 1912. And there were times when Chelsea were relegated. That just goes to show how bad they are right now.
The loss to Brighton could very well be the lowest point of the BlueCo era. The fans have completely turned. But the ownership have painted themselves into a corner with how they have handled the club over the past four seasons. The real fear is that the damage has already been done and there is no quick fix.
As for Rosenior, he sounded like a man who had accepted defeat after the loss to Brighton. And for the first time, he openly called out the players. He said when speaking to the media (via CFCDaily):
“Tonight was not tactical. This was about desire, spirit, courage and I did not see enough of that tonight.”
Rosenior openly questions Chelsea players’ desire after loss to Brighton
There might be something to that. That being said, it is literally Rosenior’s job to get the best out of his team. And he is failing at that. Badly.
The performances, even in the Graham Potter era, were not nowhere near this bad. He never lost more than three games in a row. And he had actually lost once in his last five games in charge of the club before being sacked. It is remarkable that Rosenior still finds him in the Stamford Bridge hot seat.
Of course, not everybody agrees with Rosenior’s assessment of the game. Trevoh Chalobah, a Cobham graduate, said (via Absolute Chelsea):
“I think the boys were running their socks off. If you look in the dressing room, everyone is tired. It’s nothing to do with effort. We gave it our all. We got beat today. We ran today. The stats are stats. The boys are tired.”
Chelsea’s strategy needs to change completely
‘Tweaking’ things won’t fix matters if that is what BlueCo plan to do in the summer. There needs to be a complete change at Chelsea, at all levels.
There needs to be a recognition that a large part of this squad is not good enough. Of course, they have been brought in by BlueCo’s recruitment team. So, some people need to answer for that.
As for the managerial position, Rosenior’s is pretty untenable at this point. Chelsea need consider sacking him and putting Calum McFarlane in interim charge, even as early as the FA Cup semi-final against Leeds United, if they want to salvage something out of this campaign. The next permanent manager needs to be a proven manager, given full backing to make his decisions.
The recruitment strategy, of course, has been the biggest failure. It is time to scrap that completely and run operations as they do at consistently successful clubs like Manchester City, PSG, Bayern Munich, etc. The Brighton and Bournemouth model cannot be the one Chelsea are aiming to replicate. For all the good players those clubs have signed, and their scouting has been truly phenomenal, how many trophies have they won? When the objectives are different, the application needs to be as well.
