Thomas Tuchel has been sacked as Chelsea manager, he won the champions league and the club world cup he’s done very well with them, but following a defeat to Dino in the champions league he’s gone
As we’ve said Thomas huckles won a lot of stuff he’s done very well with Chelsea um but they’ve been in bad form for a long time and haven’t started the season very well and there are various tactical reasons for that there are lots of unrest at the club pulling a big takeover, but um it seems very much like the ownership Todd Bowley has decided that such will be gone before the dynamo Zagreb game is that true and how has that come about what’s happened here
That’s what we’re being told yeah, that the owner’s thinking on this sort of crystallized before the dynamo game that they were taking a longer view based on the broader trends of Thomas Kuchel’s tenure and I think when you look at it came in in January 2021 when Chelsea was in drift um he turned them into champions league winners I believe it was one of the most high-end ones of the most impressive high-end
Coaching jobs we’ve seen in terms of the immediate impact they deservedly won the champions league in Porto and then for the first half of last season they look like genuine premier league title challengers building on that success
It was very much um built on the same incredible defense the pressing system that tucker had implemented for the attack still wasn’t great but there was still reason to believe that would get that right in time and then basically from December 2021 to now um Chelsea have been a different team they’ve been making mistakes defensively the attack has not improved in fact in recent weeks it’s got worse um in terms of players decision making and the general flow of things and then you add to that the context that we’ve been hearing from our reporting the tension between too cool and the new owners over the
Summer has been a very stressful and eventful summer for Chelsea um with the takeover only happening in late May and then, of course, a massive push to get this squad in position for the new season too cool, we’re told, and he’s alluded to this on the record anyway that he didn’t particularly love um being thrust into a much more central role in Chelsea’s recruitment or at least you know giving his opinion on players well that’s a big one I mean let’s go through them in the kind of order so a lot of the issues
Here appear to be that there’s stuff on the pitch that isn’t working very well at the moment it’s kind of tactically those sorts of things a lot of the issues are outside of football and more long-term strategy with the new owners so let’s look at what has um annoyed or disappointed the ownership and why they decided to pull the trigger and then we should look at what’s annoying Thomas chuckle and maybe what was making him unhappy and then we should go into what’s next so in terms of what’s annoying the ownership or maybe not annoyed but you know why they’ve decided to not kill him but get rid um
So this long-term strategy what is it they’re looking for, why is he, not their guy I think you saw Todd Bowley and beaded Bali be obvious around Cobham over the summer and they were in us Jose Feliciano as well the other co-founder of Clearlake capital um were very much around the squad during that u.s preseason tour and they’ve been at Cobham reasonably regularly since um they are
far more contactable for the players and the staff than certainly Roman Abramovich was and I think
You know they’ve also been they mentioned in the statement getting rid of too cool that they’ve been taking 100 days in their ownership um and that that has very much been a review of all aspects of the club and some decisions they’d already come to of
course getting rid of marina and Bruce buck a lot of the football
the structure above touch, but it’s been evaluating everyone, including tulle um and I think the conclusion that they drew in terms of turkey and the players was that he wasn’t reaching them to a high enough level anymore that there were too many disaffected players um as much with two calls man management as with anything else I think
I think a lot of people at Chelsea are well aware that tukul is an elite tactician um that has not been the issue as much it’s more been managing this squad you saw what happened going into the window five of Chelsea’s seven attackers wanted to leave and were deeply unhappy with their situations that was a reflection on Tikal’s
management as much as anything else um and that was something the owners were
paying attention to so sorry so it’s kind of like a bit of a cultural change within the club
strategically the management style so
The way they want in the way that bully and his um his corners and whoever’s running the club want to want to run the entire club, not just the first team is different to how it was before and chuckles management doesn’t fit within that system that’s one of the reasons why they’ve at the risk of uh using Manchester city ownership’s favorite
word holistic
Does seem to be along those lines and I think culture is a crucial word here I think they just felt that the tone that was set was not the right one there was an impression rightly or wrongly, I’m sure they would probably contest this that he wasn’t fully committed or at least as fully committed as he had been earlier in his Chelsea tenure, of course, he’s had a lot to deal with personally as well with it with his divorce and
a lot of stuff that’s been covered in
The UK newspapers um that I think has probably been more public than he would have liked to be honest, well I mean this is relevant because um another thing that has been said of
The ownership of the reporting is that the communication between the manager and players has changed, he’s had a different kind of demeanor at times and the atmosphere on the training ground has been described as tense, so the tactic stuff is all well and good, but if he’s not getting the motivation to the players that’s not going to fit in with what the new owners want to have going forward and if it looks like his he’s maybe not
their guy now is the right time to pull the trigger is it, yeah, and there have been questions about
Turkle um in this regard at previous clubs um you know that the main red flags that were
that was raised when tucker was when Chelsea was thinking about appointing touch um was him managing upwards, but he’s also had problems managing dressing rooms in the past and I think the surprising thing about this happening at Chelsea is that
they don’t have a Killian and happy they don’t have a Neymar then you know that this is
Well of course and had plenty of say in that um but this isn’t the most difficult dressing room to manage in terms of personalities you could say maybe was troublesome to a degree last season but generally, I think early on in his time taken was
was pleasantly surprised at how easy this group was to work with but over time more and more players grew disaffected with the way that too cool was managing them whether it was playing them out of position, whether it was losing trust in them, and suddenly not playing them and not explaining why whether it was some of you know sort of histrionics on the touchline when players would make mistakes or things would go wrong
The way he would talk to them in training you know some of this stuff we reported earlier in the year, saying that several of Chelsea’s attackers were unhappy not just with the way was using them but with the way, he was talking to them so these management people upstairs are seeing um the squad management maybe it’s not perfect, uh and players disaffected losing control of that sort of bit and so that’s I mean communication is key in any business, uh I know that because I know the business and so when you lose that’s probably one of the reasons than that they decided he’s not their long-term
the guy that’s what they’re looking at he’s not long-term so that’s the thing that’s gone wrong, but as the things that might have annoyed chuckle and what might have made him be not himself, f his issues we’ve kind of brushed on that no need to go into that too much um other things that like better check leaving is different because again the cultural shift was involved a lot on
The training ground or day-to-day things helping with transfers and tell me about this with tukul not enjoying being part of the summer recruitment process which is far more um it sounds very much like they kept talking to him through this whereas before he’d be able to sit back and be a coach rather than being involved with all the different transfer incomings well when tucker came to Chelsea one of the things that he liked was that it was an elite club everything was set up to win but it was also set up for him to just coach and he had that structure above him he had a perfect relationship with peter Czech who played a huge role in getting him to the club in the first place but he also had a very productive relationship with marina um and I think the departures of those two particularly Czech I mean tucker did not miss an opportunity in the last few weeks to talk about to bring the conversation back to how
Much he enjoyed working with a check and it felt quite pointed yeah, you can’t do that if you’re talking to people upstairs can you like if I was sagging off my bosses you can’t do that exactly and when it comes to the recruitment thing this summer I think
there there’s always an element of people talking out both sides of their mouths here because if you ask to call and you ask any coach in the world would you like more influence on which players are brought in to play in your team I think they’d all say yes
because you at the end of the day get judged on how these players do so if you can get more
More of an influence on which players are signed and which players are just as importantly, not signed than most coaches would take that and I think too cool did um appreciate that in a sense, but I think he also found it incredibly stressful um I mean, if you’re in any job though, as well you’re at your job and then you get new owners coming or a new manager comes in and they just do things in a way that doesn’t sit well with you and personally
You don’t like it, it’s the way it worked before worked very well suddenly it’s now you’ve been asked questions you don’t want to be asked or you’re being involved in conversations you don’t want to have to be you’ve got loads of meetings this meeting could have been an email that sort of stuff you know you all know this uh it’s similar I mean it’s not the same as that but these are the sort of things come across right
I think playing fatigued is a factor as well when you look at the last few months of last season with everything that was going on with Abramovich and the bid process and everything that took all was having to talk about that wasn’t Chelsea’s performances on
the pitch yeah um and the kind of leadership the almost statesmanlike leadership that he was expected to provide in the void of um in the void at the top of the club
and then you follow that with a summer which would normally be his downtime and instead
He’s in constant conversations at least early in the summer with ownership giving his opinions on players on potential deals that are being offered or that Chelsea might be pursuing um, it’s a lot and then you go straight from that into a brand new season
with a group of players that are already kind of calling on you, I’m not getting the preferred like attacking options before the last day of the window as well
yeah, and you’ve got a squad that is in flux because a lot of players are being signed and the players that are there know that and I think that can be quite destabilizing as
Well, because players are coming in to challenge you for your place, maybe take your place um and I think the spirit that powered Chelsea’s run to Porto in 2021
and kind of underpinned the start of that title charge um last season it almost felt like it did at the Bernabeu when they went out of the champions league it was the last thing they were playing for and then just the culmination of everything since um that’s a great point and the relationship with two cool has just suffered with that I think yeah
That, I think that’s a great point, so like we know all the things we know so far is that it was decided before the DNA was a great game this is a long-term plan from the ownership uh, it’s based on like we talked about things like tulle seeming a bit detached from the squad and things he’s doing seem a bit frustrated with those above him they
want someone who works with them and they’re not higher on fire type of organization like Dave Roberts, who’s the manager of Todd bully’s la dodgers baseball team he’s been there for seven years and just recently signed a new three-year deal they’re not people who come in and chop and change whatever
It’s all built for long-term success and so on that note now that chuckle’s gone and we can move on to whoever happens next with Chelsea and the managers listed
are Graeme potter is he’s good first choice yeah, um Mauricio is also very
much there I think what you’re seeing, you know, especially with potter being at the top of the list is not the uh stereotypical mindset of the new splashy owner, you know there’s been an I think there’s been a desire to look at Chelsea’s new owners that way over the summer, particularly the numbers they were throwing around in the transfer market but they’ve there’s always been an insistence that what they’re doing is strategic
it’s based on responsible disciplined investment even if it is aggressive and we’re talking about big numbers here and graham potter’s not the kind of guy that you go for if you just want a name you know he’s never won anything he’s never coached at this level it is a risk uh it’s quite a bold appointment quite an exciting one if it comes off uh he has to say yes, of course, he doesn’t like it before exactly yeah it’s interesting he’d be great there like I mean very qualified manager um his teams play
really good football and the team looks very balanced but this is a thing like if they
I mean the people above portrait Brighton are very well structured and I mean it’s a very well-run club and that’s perhaps a lot of why he’s been able to do so well there is that it’s so well run above him that then what you see on the pitch reflects what’s upstairs and Chelsea’s the like the squads in a bit of flux it seems very much like
like a bully is an interim sporting director at the moment isn’t he at Chelsea so very their structure is in flux so it could be that it’s challenging to get the right person in now
well and the other aspect to all of it is that you know if you were being guided by best practice and committed to best practice above all else you’d appoint a sporting director first and then go to that person or even during the recruitment process for that person say who would you hire as the coach what are your thoughts on that and that they
would lead that next hire but Chelsea can’t do that now because of the timing of this
sacking
They need a coach sooner rather than, later than everything we’re being told as they’re motivated to get someone in as quickly as possible and that means whoever the next sporting director will be is inheriting the coach as we’ve seen at other clubs that can be a problematic situation in itself so I wouldn’t um I wouldn’t begrudge Graham, potter, if
He was looking at all of this thinking there are just too many unknowns here as great an opportunity as it is there are a lot of unknowns about who I would be working for how it would all work and of course, you’re catapulting yourself into a completely different
The stratosphere of expectations um and a different type of player that you would be coaching than you would be at Brighton in terms of reputation and ego you know in some cases yeah, I was saying why would you give up a good thing if you’re having fun why would you leave huh money isn’t everything I mean I’m sure you’d have a good time
achieve more success it doesn’t matter anyway that is what happened with Todd that’s what’s happened with Thomas chuckle, uh being sacked from Chelsea uh thank
