It’s certainly not all doom and gloom at Chelsea right now and despite the fact that we are sat in 11th place in the Premier League in mid-March. I still have no doubts that our owners are full of ambition in and passion for this club.
I see and hear all the negativity about the owners and I’ve consistently expressed my own concerns with them, the sporting directors, and many of the decisions that have been made, and mistakes they have made too.
But I think it’s important to remember that any business, especially a football club, NEEDS to make profit, and NEEDS to make good profit. And essentially, winning football matches is THE best way to do this. So how anyone can doubt the ambitions of the owners in that sense is beyond me. Of course they want to win, AND make profits! The two go hand in hand. If they don’t win then we don’t make serious profits from European football and top sponsorship revenue etc.
They are going to do things that we don’t agree with, and we can and should continue to be vocal about that as a fanbase. It’s our right to do that as passionate fans. We pay a lot of money to support our club, so of course we must have a voice and call things as we see them.
I’m not going to go fully into the things I think they have done wrong again, as I haven written about that enough times in recent weeks and months. But on the whole, I think the squad build has been naive and certain areas and positions have been neglected.
Having said that though, I have been impressed with some of the talents that our sporting directors have found and signed, and although I’ve not been impressed with ALL of them, I do think they have shown talent spotting to largely be an area of expertise for them on the whole. Joe Shields I think is particularly talented in spotting and recommending young players.
However, what they have failed to do is build a squad for this season and the here and now, yet whilst setting expectations that are vastly unrealistic with the squad they have built. We signed too many raw and developing players, and we ignored vital cogs in what has proven to be the makings of successful teams over time – a fine balance of youth and proven quality experience. I will forever believe that the U25 rule was just ridiculous, and I also think they should have done more to back and listen to the manager, regardless of whether I think he is good enough now or not.
And this brings me to my main and final point, Chelsea need a leading CEO of football, and they have needed that for some time. Our sporting directors do not have experience of squad building, and that is SO different to being good talent spotters. It’s like putting all the ingredients together, but cooking something that is not quite perfect in how it tastes yet. We need a head chef to oversee it all and make sure the end product is perfectly tasty before allowing the trainee chefs to put the food out there.
Liverpool have just hired Michael Edwards as the new CEO of Football, and this is exactly the title we need to be looking to hire.
Chelsea have been consistently trying for Edwards, as I’ve reported on here, and it looks like they still were trying for Edwards.
Paul Joyce of The Times reported this week that Chelsea offered Edwards the chance to be ‘football chief executive’ but Edwards politely rejected the offer in favour of Liverpool.
This reassures me that the club have recognised that they do need a head CEO of football and are at least trying. You would have remembered that I have reported this a few times in recent months, so it’s nice to hear that they are still thinking this way.
For me, I think Frank Lampard would be a perfect option. He has his director qualifications, and we are all well aware of his top talent I.D and squad building skills. I believe he would know exactly how to build a perfect squad.
However, the issue with Lampard is he has no experience doing the role, which perhaps makes my other points about getting someone in who has experience of squad building, rather contradictory. But I wouldn’t be upset or concerned if we turned to Lampard for this role, I genuinely think he would be great.
My colleague The Score is putting an article together on a name who he thinks would be a good fit – Oliver Mitzlaff. But I’ll let him go into the details on him and why he thinks he would be great. That article will be out at some point very soon.
There will be other good options as well, and for me, if we are to be serious again any time soon, we need to prioritise bringing in a CEO of football ASAP! This is vital.
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