This may sound a bit wild, but I - kind of - know what Graham Potter is going through at the moment.
This whole ‘fling players at the wall and see what sticks’ madness, I had a similar experience when I was manager of Brisbane Roar in 2019.
Ok, when I say similar I’m stretching the parameters a lot, but back then, I basically signed an entire squad, and had to create a team out of 17 new signings in a few weeks.
Look, I’m in no way comparing, I know there is a whole universe between Chelsea and the Roar. I’m just explaining how hard it can be to have so many players arrive at the same time, and then be asked to mould them in an effective outfit immediately.
Aside from the very obvious difference of level - the Premier League is a totally different stratosphere, an advanced life form to the A League - there was one other crucial difference. Myself and the coach Tony Grant chose all the players.
When we arrived, 23 players had departed, and we needed an entire new squad. Tony and I were involved in all of the work, we scouted, we spoke to people, we analysed what we needed, and we created a plan, where we tried to make everything fit.
I don’t believe Potter has had that kind of input himself. In fact, I know he hasn’t. You look at Chelsea’s squad, and their glaring, desperate need in the January window was a central striker.
For all his many talents, Kai Havertz is most definitely not a number 9. Neither is Raheem Sterling, and with Broja injured and Aubameyang confined to the bench as soon as Potter had a good look at him, their need was a centre forward.
Yet of eight signings, none fits that bill as a proven top level goalscorer. Three were kids for the future in David Fofana, Morgan and Maduke, Felix plays anywhere but nine, and the rest were other positions.
So more than £320m spent, and Potter’s one area of real need not addressed. It would be almost comic, if it wasn’t so serious for the manager. You know damn well, if he’d had an influence, then he would have insisted on a No.9.
I’m not privy to what goes on behind the scenes there, but I bet Potter is far from happy. It looks suspiciously like the owners have gone out and signed a bunch of players, any decent player on the market, and said ‘here, you sort it all out’.
When we signed all those players for Brisbane, we won three of our first 12 matches, and you don’t need to understand too much about football to know why. It’s impossible to integrate so many players into a team in a couple of weeks, even at that level.
And we knew what we needed and wanted. By the time Covid struck and shut down the league, we had turned things around, had moved up the table and lost only two of our last 13 matches…both by a 1-0 scoreline against the top two sides in the league.
So we actually recruited a decent set of players for that level, and were on course to make the end of season play-offs. Even so, it took us almost three months to sort things out properly.
Potter doesn’t have three months, and he doesn’t have any real chance of integrating all those players into his squad this season. He’ll have to stick with what he knows, and try to get maybe three or four of them into the starting XI.
Clearly, you don’t pay £120m to put a player on the bench, so Enzo Fernandez starts; Mykhailo Mudryk looked decent in half an hour at Liverpool, and Joao Felix can make a difference.
I just don’t get why they splashed all that extra cash though. Look at the likes of Guardiola and Klopp, they like to operate with relatively small squads, keeping their group tight and together.
Guardiola was even prepared to let Cancelo go and reduce his squad numbers even further for the sake of harmony at City….but there can be no harmony at Chelsea with players wondering what the hell is going on.
I did a quick count up of their squad, and there are what, 30 odd players, not including some of their good kids? That’s too many. What happens to the likes of Carney Chukwuemeka, who was only signed - for big money - in the summer, but now has no clear pathway to the first team?
What happens to Mason Mount, Havertz and Pulisic? It’s just madness to me. It’s not sound football management, it’s like someone messing around on Championship manager.
And that’s even before you consider the very serious harm such a model can do to football. When a team is able to spend more in one window than all of the other big five leagues in Europe spent together - when they can spend almost as much as all the other teams in the Premier League combined - then it’s dangerous territory.
It is just an arms race, and only the richest clubs can respond. It’s another step closer to a European Super League by default, with the Premier League becoming that Super League by default, and the rest of Europe left behind.
It doesn’t sit right with me, or many millions of fans across the world. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t sit right with Potter’s instincts either.
And really, FIFA and the Premier League have to take a forensic look at what is happening, to ensure it doesn’t distort football for a decade or more, just as Abramovich’s money did in the early 2000s.
