New Years’ Resolutions are one of the Western World’s favourite traditions at the beginning of a new calendar year. Self-reflection, looking at our own bad habits, and mounting a challenge to change for the better. It’s very wholesome, honest attempts at change. I personally love them.
Chelsea, on the other hand, have seemingly made a point in telling the world that no change in mindset is coming in 2026.
The club known for sacking good managers during good periods for seemingly marginal offences has done it again, and, on New Years’ Day, have sacked the manager who brought them their first silverware since Todd Boehly’s takeover in 2022, four years ago now. Was it for performance? They said officially that “a change gives the team the best chance of getting the season back on track”, but we all know it was because of everything off-field. It’s the latest in Chelsea’s long list of puzzling sackings of genuinely good managers.
Tuchel left weeks into the new owners’ first season after being “backed” with other 250m.
Pochettino left after taking a black hole 12th-place Chelsea to Europe and overseeing massive rises in players like Cole Palmer and Moises Caicedo.
In fact, Chelsea are the only club where managers who are sacked there don’t experience a massive drop in reputation. Take clubs like Man Utd, where managers like Ole, Ten Hag, and Moyes are mocked for years after failures there, and barely get good jobs.
Let’s look at some recent Chelsea sackings and where they ended up next:
Jose Mourinho – Man Utd
Antonio Conte – Inter
Maurizio Sarri – Juventus
Thomas Tuchel – Bayern
Mauricio Pochettino – USA
There are some massive jobs in here, and it’s because massive clubs know that if you’re sacked from Chelsea, chances are you’ve probably done something right. Under former owner Roman Abramovich, Chelsea were known for being trigger happy with managers, but the new ownership has taken it to a whole new level.
What’s the problem? Why is Chelsea like this? Why is the frontrunner for the job someone who’s only ever managed Hull and Strasbourg? Let me break it down.
Chelsea’s new owners, Todd Boehly/BlueCo/ClearLake, are owners unlike any we’ve ever seen in football. Their objective is solely investment. Unlike other owners, they don’t intentionally do things that put the club at risk or anything like that. No, they do it by completely neglecting the playing side of football in order to focus on investment.
If you need proof, look at their signings. In four years, they’ve spent 1.8 billion euros on players. How many world class stars have they bought for that amount? Cole Palmer. Moises Caicedo. Maybe Enzo Fernandez. That’s it. In that same time, they’ve brought in 55 players. They’ve made 56 signings, with the acquisition of Joao Felix on loan in 2023 and then permanently in 2024. Of those 55, a grand total of 23 are on the Chelsea squad and eligible to play. For comparison, in the same time frame, Real Madrid made 13 signings, 10 of which are still on the team, spent “just” 450 million, and have bought four world class stars (Mbappe, Bellingham, Trent, Rudiger).
Why sign them? Of the 55 players signed;
23 are at Chelsea and eligible to play
2 are at Chelsea and not registered to any squads
4 have been sold at a profit
4 have been sold at a loss
3 have been sold at even
8 have gone to Strasbourg at some point
6 are out on loan
1 got a doping ban
4 are arriving in 2026
Does this look like the movement of a football club to you? It looks to me like Chelsea are literally just signing these players to make a profit, to be an investment firm, pretty much. To be fair, it’s a great way to make money. Look at Renato Veiga, for instance. He signed for Chelsea in July 2024 for 14 million, played 18 games, then left in January for a loan with Juventus for 4 million euros. He came back in the summer, and in August was sold to Villarreal for 24.5 million. That’s a gain, in 13 months, of 14.5 million euros. It’s a similar situation with Noni Madueke, who Chelsea earned 21.5 million euros on in 2.5 years.
The thing is, however, that everyone knew about this loophole and how effective it could be to make money. Some clubs like Ajax and Dortmund even use similar methods, developing young players to boost their careers, get on-field success, and gain enough money to continue being a top club. The difference with Chelsea is that they only care about the money. In Dortmund and Ajax, it feels like a nursery. At Chelsea, it feels like a business, and the biggest loser is the manager.
This is why I believe Chelsea will hire Liam Rosenior as their new manager to replace Maresca. Chelsea isn’t looking for a Mourinho anymore, nor a Tuchel, Klopp, or any established outspoken manager. What Chelsea want isn’t a manager, but a head coach. A coach who’ll just stick to tactics, know his place, and not cause a fuss while still winning. If orders come from the higher-ups to play a certain player because of a contract clause, the manager will find a way.
This is, in large part, why Maresca was hired in the first place. A soft spoken manager who’d just been the lowly City assistant as well as having short spells at Parma and Leicester, all went as expected for Maresca after his initial hiring. He went with the boards’ signings, the players he was given, and won. He got Chelsea back into Top 4, won them the Conference League, and won them the Club World Cup, beating PSG in a shock 3-0 result. It was going great.
However, it all started to go wrong after Levi Colwill’s injury, after which Maresca requested the board sign a center-back, an ask that rubbed them the wrong way, and after that tensions began to climb as friction grew, going all the way until his sacking.
As such, Chelsea want to hire an even gooder boy in Liam Rosenior, and will pass up on the more experienced and honestly better Xavi and Glasner on their way to it. This is the sign of a club broken beyond repair. This club is more a clownshow than an actual footballing institution. I hope Chelsea miss top five this year, they deserve to know how much they messed up. Until next time.