Chelsea vice-captain Thiago Silva has stepped up and bluntly insisted on the club to focus on its priorities after complications and a swollen squad has failed to stop the rot at Stamford Bridge since the takeover by Todd Boehly and his partners.
Fully cognizant that the solutions to Chelsea’s ongoing issues must be found outside the transfer market if the club is to get back to the glory days of old, the recommendation put forward by defensive talisman Thiago Silva was almost akin to a desperate plea to the club bosses, as he bemoaned the Blues’ bloated squad in the wake of Tuesday’s Champions League exit to Real Madrid.
Co-owner Todd Boehly and his partners completed a £4.25billion takeover of Chelsea in May 2022 and has since been splurging hundreds of millions of pounds on new players in their first year since taking over from Roman Abramovich.
However, more deep-rooted issues are suspected to be at play after the club plunged from its perch as the crowned kings of Europe in 2021 to sitting dismally 11th in the Premier League with only a handful of games to go. Adding to the melee are the sackings of managers Thomas Tuchel – who won them the Champions League trophy in 2021 – and Graham Potter have already been fired by the club, and the spicy addition of former Blues icon Frank Lampard as the new interim manager till the end of the season. Lampard was in the dugout officially for Tuesday’s 2-0 loss to Real (4-0 on aggregate).
“I think the first step has been made, an incorrect step but it has been made,” the former Brazil captain told reporters after Chelsea’s fifth straight home fixture without a win. “We can’t be blaming managers if we don’t take responsibility. It’s a hard period for the club, with a lot of indecision – change of ownership, new players arriving.
“We had to increase the size of the changing room because it didn’t fit the size of the squad. A positive point is that there are amazing players within the squad, but on the other hand there is always players that are going to be unhappy. There is always going to be someone upset because not everyone can play.”
Chelsea broke the Premier League transfer record signing Enzo Fernandez from Benfica for £107million, while Mykhailo Mudryk and Wesley Fofana cost the club another £70m and £62m, respectively. This spending does not include the £230m of squad investments in the 11 months since Boehly’s arrival, leading Silva to suggest there should be more substance behind all the spending.
“The manager can only pick 11, from 30 or something,” he continued. “That’s tough. Some can’t make the squad. We signed eight in January. We need to stop and put a strategy in place otherwise next season we could make the same mistakes.”
In the wake of their Champions League eviction on Tuesday by Los Blancos, Chelsea are in serious need of a series of miracles to qualify for any European competition next term, as the chances of the Blues narrowing the 14-point gap between them and fifth-place rivals Tottenham appear slim, with Lampard having lost all his four matches as interim manager thus far.