I don't pretend knowing more than other fans. Actually I'm perhaps the most clueless fan on earth since I was quite angry seeing the Huddersfield lineup expecting a draw. We ended up winning 5-0. I was also confident about THAT City game, well... Surely my football knowledge is questionable but that's one of the reasons I want to have a better view of the situation we're in right now and go against the arguments pointing out for specific culprits. In my opinion Chelsea is a worldwide known club and everyone associated to this club has a part to play for what's going on right now. Medias have a role too imo but I won't be talking about it because medias are gonna medias anyway. We all know that all of them including Matt Law like to make drama everytime things go south at Chelsea.

Let's analyse how everyone starting with the coach and finishing with the fans have a role in it.

THE MANAGER

• Stubbornness

Sarri is very stubborn that's true. Does that make him a bad manager ? Hell no. Should he adapt his system to suit the players he's got right now ? Hell yes.
But to be honest that's not the first time I've seen that. Compare Sarri with previous coaches there are similar traits that the fanbase somehow forget when they become nostalgic about how better the good ol' times were. Remember Mourinho and Conte more often than not sticking with a very small group of players and being criticized for it when they were in charge ? Remember these two not giving a shit about youth even when the first teamers were more than underperforming ? Let's not forget they also had their preferencies. Mourinho kept Iva on the pitch to death. I remember Conte taking the blame last season for not benching Moses and playing him week in week out even though he was in terrible form. Feels similar to Sarri and Alonso...

• In-game management

Also remember how Mourinho was criticized for playing the 1-0 win and we ended up drawing 1-1 with the only substitutes being made in order to park the bus. When we were losing under Mourinho he was criticized because his "only tactical change was to bring in more attacking players". Now remember everyone criticizing Conte because "we need to wait until the 80th minute to make the first substitution even when we were losing". Feels similar to Sarri's predictable substitutions...

• About Conte specifically

Oh Conte was by far the most flexible of the three coaches and I was always ConteIn (I was also JoseIn and I am SarriIn) but I remember a lot of critics saying he wanted to get sacked when he was publicly saying that "we need to suffer, it's our level". I have to say Conte is my absolute favourite coach right now but it didn’t work. Shame but there’s no point in looking constantly at the past we need to move on.

THE BOARD

Where am I going to ? Every manager has his flaws and qualities (and they can improve and learn from their mistakes too you know, but sometimes they need time to really assess the problem(s)). Please don't forget that only 3 months ago everyone was thrilled about Sarriball and glad that we were making offensive substitutions even when winning. That's why I don't understand why some fans are just acting like prime Roman, having zero patience putting the blame on the manager everytime there's a problem.

• Relationship with the managers

We never really back our managers and in the end we end up having players who were not good enough and who overperformed in a specific system a season or two but can’t do shit in another system. I can accept that we no longer have the money to back them as we did before but then we need to offer them more assurances about their jobs and communicate with them constantly (see Conte being surprised Matic was sold). The manager coming in our club also knows very well his job is never safe. The players know it too and decide to down tools everytime they want a manager gone. Perhaps if our money is gone we should expect a bit less results and offer more time to our coaches like Liverpool did with Klopp. For example we refused to give Sarri Hysaj perhaps because we rate James. Yeah why not but I hope we’ve explained that to Sarri and that we are ready to pay for it in the next 3 months or so…

• Transfers and youth

Everyone was putting the blame on Emenalo for the terrible transfer markets we’ve had recently. Now they’re blaming Marina. Well the problem is bigger than only one man or woman. We use our youth only to raise money and that’s why our youngsters are so inclined to move. Our mistake if we can’t force our managers to play the youth or simply get managers who like promoting the youth. We should also have a better long term planning. We have lost several leaders recently and didn’t replace them. What did our scouts do ? Did they forget the mental part of the game ? The lack of DOF is costing us. The fact we were ready to let Courtois go for free and that we ended up overpaying for Kepa (who is a great signing imo but still very overpriced) sums it up really. Still I don’t think we’ve only done bad business recently it’s just that it’s a bit of a hit and miss. Once the player being bought is just simply not good enough , the other time he’s just not suited to our system. And sometimes he’s really good.

THE SQUAD

That leads us to our squad.

• Players not suited to the system

I don’t think that our squad lacks that much quality as it’s often said. I think we have a more than decent squad but with few players who as I said before perform only in specific systems and not in others. Alonso first comes to mind. Magnificent LWB but terrible LB, sadly. Bakayoko too was a player who was not suited to our style of play (also lacked confidence badly but still you could see he wasn’t good enough tactically to play for Conte).

• Players not good enough

I’m not even talking about the Zappacostas and Drinkwaters of this world who aren’t good enough for any specific system at all. Also Luiz has to go. Could have been a wonderful CB but has always been meh because of his brainfarts. Same for Willian who has all the talent in the world but really not the brain to be good enough for us.

We also have some deadwoods. Azpi was an incredible player for us but he can’t play RB anymore or at least not offensive RB… Pedro was one of the most underrated wingers in the world but he’s old now and we need to move on.

• Players who want to go

Also, and I’m sorry to say it but players like Hazard and CHO have to go if they don’t want to fight for the club. I actually won’t even blame them, I don’t expect every players to fall deeply in love with Chelsea but there’s not point in keeping non committed players (that’s one of the good things our board has done recently, that should continue).

Bar these players I really think our squad has quality. I just think that once we get the 3 or 4 players we need we’ll become a very good team (over to you Chelsea board/youth). Now the results are not good, that doesn’t mean that our players are all shit and there’s no point in finding specific scapegoats to explain it.

THE FANBASE

Finally, the fanbase. It has been so toxic and negative recently. Lose, blame Cahill. Once Cahill is benched, blame Morata. Once Morata is benched blame Willian. Now blame Alonso and Barkley. I’m sorry but not for me. There are 11 players + substitutes + a coach, aka a group, a team, a club behind all this and we, as fans, need to get behind them in difficult moments like these and at least if you aren’t behind them, don’t stand in front of them. This Twitter hate needs to stop. We hated so much Bakayoko and Morata I’m pretty sure it was one of the reasons they struggled that much here. Look how well Baka is doing right now. Morata perhaps won’t perform, perhaps. But still a player should never get that much stick in the first place except the ones who can’t behave like Courtois. Top comments in the CFC official accounts are from the " fans " mocking our own players, saying SarriOut etc.

Meanwhile the Bridge is still so quiet... What happened ? SB has never been very loud but it has gotten to a point where I don’t even know if we’re playing at home or away (actually there are much more Chelsea chants away) ! All I’m saying is all this doesn’t help the club when it needs it the most. You can have opinions that’s great and I just shared mine but you can’t hate the team you love. I know it’s often said that there’s a small fence separating love and hate but it is also often said that we should stick together during hard times. I’m all for doing it.

CONCLUSION

Anyway, sorry it was long and perhaps useless but to sum it up I would say that Jose was 75% right when he said that " we win as a team and we lose as a team ". In my opinion " we win as a club and we lose as a club " is more accurate. We will come back. KTBFFH.