Are Chelsea Going Through A Major Crisis?

When thousands of soccer streaming sites allow you to play your favourite match without any cost, it doesn’t make sense to pay for the subscription. Only a fool or a truthful person would do that. I’m neither. But I’d consider paying for a plan that allows me to watch Todd Boehly’s live reaction on a corner of my screen for the entire duration of Chelsea games.

It would be fun, a live lesson to the American billionaire on the complexity of the game, and why it’s never as easy as simply assembling an exciting talent with all the money in the world and letting it roll. Even in the age of broken finance, when success on the pitch is largely correlated to how deep the club’s pocket is, age-old terms like vision and planning hold importance.

Chelsea, at this point, surely lacks that vision. From last season’s squad, only Raheem Sterling, Ben Chilwell, and Reece James are now the mainstay in their playing XI. Nine of their playing XI from the 2021 Champions League triumph has been dumped elsewhere. Their midfield, though heavily stacked with some of the most exciting youngsters, is entirely unrecognisable from the last season. The club has been operating like one of those doomed startups burning cash to acquire new customers, but only to sink deeper with each penny they spend. Even greater roadblocks await if they fail to qualify for European football, this season.

Five games into the season, they have accumulated just five points, with their only victory coming against Luton Town, a team that is yet to win a game after earning a promotion to the Premier League this season. In their last two games, they neither scored nor conceded. Admittedly, on quite a few occasions Mauricio Pochettino’s side looked like a well-drilled unit, threatening on attack but never enough to bury the ball inside the net. A growing list of injuries isn’t helping their cause either.

After pulling his hamstring against Liverpool in the opening game, Reece James has missed the remaining games, and there’s still no confirmation of his availability. Malo Gusto, his replacement, has done a fine job but he is not James. Moises Caicedo, the £115m signing, didn’t have a great start to his life at Stamford Bridge, conceding a penalty in his second game and now might be unavailable for the weekend’s fixture, after taking a big knock on his knee.

But their biggest setback came when their star signing Christopher Nkunku suffered a horrific injury before the start of the season. It’s unlikely he’ll return before next year, and his absence is sorely felt. Nicholas Jackson, the target man, has been an enterprising presence, displaying great holding skill and facilitating attacks by combing with midfielder, but all this amounts to nothing if he is unable to score. Jackson has scored just one goal for an incredibly high 3.3xG, a massive underperformance.

Glitches exist in every department, yet there are some optimistic signs too. They have failed to put up a convincing performance, but there’s no lack of cohesion on the field. They have been pretty fluid when in possession and tightly organised out of possession. If goals start coming, they still have a chance to shoot for European qualification.