New Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca may have a countdown hanging above him, oppressing his every idea, move and tactic. Photo: EPA
Comment by Morgan Bolton
The new English Premier League season is filling me with dread, and it hasn’t even kicked off yet.
Perhaps it is just the pre-season blues, a gnawing concern that there will be little improvement in the fortunes of my club, Chelsea, and a suspicion that new boss Enzo Maresca has a countdown hanging above him, oppressing his every idea, move and tactic.
Perhaps he can even see it, if his imagination so deceives him, hallucinating about a clock counting down until his not-so-distant departure Wang Miao-style, a la The Three-Body Problem.
My great trepidation is instilled in the mere fact that since Todd Boehly and his consortium have taken ownership of the Blues, it has been a horrendous mess of terrible decisions, questionable plans and knee-jerk reactions.
Mauricio Pochettino should never have been given the boot at the end of a difficult season earlier this year.
Instead, he should have been given another campaign to see what he could extract from a youthful team with way too many years on their contracts, who are all crammed into a bloated squad.
The Blues finished the previous season strongly, and that would have been the perfect foundation to build on and mount at least a challenge for a top-four finish and a Champions League spot.
Instead, Maresca has brought his own ideas and tactics, and will have to deal with a petulant bunch of ego-driven youngsters with no real understanding of the world.
The Pensioners? More like The Pueriles, I say.
One pundit called the club’s transfer strategy “fundamentally stupid”, and I can’t help but agree.
“They are a very strange club, Chelsea,” another opined, and I have to nod in agreement. The logic in their market strategy seems to have no logic at all.
Forgive my cranky millennial outlook on the club, but the last time the Blues won the league was back in 2017, while they lifted a major championship in 2021 – the Champions League no less, and the final hurrah of the Roman Abramovich era.
Admittedly, there wasn’t always stability when the Russian oligarch was the club owner, but at least you could argue that there was a vision to make and keep Chelsea at the top of the table.
Right now, who knows what the vision is?
Boehly considers himself the ultimate “disrupter”, someone that is not so much turning the wheel, but rather breaking it and making it better, a la the Dark One, Wheel of Time-style.
The EPL needs some new perspective and innovation, for sure, but right now it doesn’t seem to be coming from Chelsea.
Cole Palmer 2033.
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) August 13, 2024
I hope I am proved wrong, and that when the new Premier League season kicks off tomorrow night, Chelsea are indeed at the forefront and have the nous to challenge the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United.
There are other clubs that present a danger, too – Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur come to the fore.
Chelsea finished sixth last season, and if they achieve that this time around, I will find myself pleasantly surprised.
To my mind, City remain the team to beat, despite mounting legal challenges that could derail a quest for an unprecedented fifth English title in a row.
They will battle, you suspect, without some new movement in the transfer market. Nonetheless, the team with the least disruption and the one that might just be the early pace-setters, is Arsenal.
As much as it pains me to state, Mike Arteta’s Gunners might be best placed to win the whole thing and end a 20-year wait for championship glory.