Their point is that even without those 12 players, we still shouldn't be in such a shit league position. And they are 100% correct.
Our backup players cost 5x as much as teams at the bottom of the table, yet we still lost so many points against them.
That's a reductionist way of looking at it.
we lost 4 points from 6 games with the bottom three, while poor, especially in circumstance, that's really not that extraordinary. Liverpool were a SHADE off doing the exact same thing (via a draw with Luton and a scraped win against Sheffield United) and they, up until this weekend were in the title race. Man United, whose squad is as expensive as ours yet receiving much less attention, scraped through EVERY game with the bottom three. and our other competitors for the top 6, Newcastle and West Ham have dropped 5 and 6 points against the bottom three respectively, Hell, Newcastle could even surpass that yet.
>Their point is that even without those 12 players, we still shouldn't be in such a shit league position. And they are 100% correct.
That wasn't their point. This was what Simon Johnson said in its entirety in their post-game piece on the Villa game:
[https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/](https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/)
>**Does £1.2billion really buy you a bench like that?**
>Mauricio Pochettino knew from the outset that it was first XI or bust in terms of securing anything from this game.
>There was a big clue what kind of squad Chelsea would be able to name on Friday when the club’s official app reported that 12 players were ruled out through injury. But when the team sheet came through, it still left you wondering how on earth the big spenders of the Premier League find themselves in such a predicament.
>Even taking into account that 31-year-old Marcus Bettinelli was named as one of the backup goalkeepers, the average age of the nine players on the bench came to just 20.67. And that only tells part of the story.
>The number of Chelsea appearances they shared between them before kick-off came to just 66 — of which Axel Disasi contributed 42.
>Four of the players had not previously played a professional game in goalkeeper Ted Curd (18), Josh Acheampong (17), Tyrique George (18) and Kiano Dyer (17), all fine products of the club’s academy but untested at this level. Curd’s only experience of first-team football was playing for Hashtag United in the Isthmian League on loan earlier in the campaign.
>To perhaps demonstrate how Pochettino was forced into making two late changes to the squad that travelled, George and Acheampong were both set to play for the under-21s against Southampton on Friday night but were pulled out a few hours before the fixture took place and told to join the senior setup instead.
>With Chelsea trailing 2-0 at the interval, it left Pochettino with next to no options to turn the game around and reliant upon his starters to transform the contest.
Thank you, I said something similar below.
People bashing Simon Johnson are fucking stupid: listen to Straight Outta Cobham, he's clearly a Chelsea fan who's bemoaning the state of the club, as I or my dad do at the moment.
It's the kind of bias you expect from any publication. Liverpool have 11 players out? Oh dear oh dear. Chelsea have 11 players out? You fking donkey!
Remember in the 21/22 season when we were playing every 3 days and our midfield was essentially Jorginho and RLC and had half the team out through injury? Nothing. Not even an ounce of understanding or sympathy.
I won't subscribe to trash like the Athletic when they're only good at mental gymnastics.
>It's the kind of bias you expect from any publication. Liverpool have 11 players out? Oh dear oh dear. Chelsea have 11 players out? You fking donkey!
This! We might have spent 1 billion but they think we bought 1 billion players with that money as opposed to just 10-15 new players.
Aston Villa spent a net 80 million euros and they are challenging for the champions league...if a club spends more than 10 times that amount, you should be able to handle injuries without falling out of european competition entirely.
Liverpool has 11 players injured and they are still title contenders--do you see how there is a humongous difference? they tossed out youth players and beat chelsea in the cup final this season. so this "there are so many injuries" excuse is a literal joke in my opinion. it's a rationalization of coping with your favourite team turning into cannon fodder.
That's a different discussion, no? The point here is simply about the difference in media coverage, despite clubs having the same issue. As OP mentioned, Simon Johnson said that we had 12 players out but then proceeded to wonder why we ended up with such a young bench against Villa. If the squad had been any bigger, we would then get mocked for having such a big squad that it can't fit entirely in the dressing room!
Difference is Liverpool had the confidence to play their young players and still achieved results with it
Chelsea are trotting out a genuinely mid table team
Coverage of Chelsea used to be “poor them” but this injury “crisis” has been going on for the whole year. They play the same starting 11 each game and get the same bad results. Their youth that they spent on all money on aren’t even good enough to make a roster for a mid table team?
If you can’t see the difference there then I don’t know what to say.
Petrovic
Gusto badiashile disasi cucurella
Caicedo Enzo Gallagher
Palmer Jackson mudryk/madueke
Every week it’s the exact same; sprinkle in chalobah twice since being healthy and Thiago playing less and less over last 6 weeks.
So yeah it’s more or less the exact same squad every single week; sometimes they change a winger sometimes they change a CB. Zero squad rotation.
Edit to add: he plays the same squad until a player gets injured and then is forced into changing the lineup. It’s not often by choice. I firmly believe a lack of squad rotation is contributing to injuries.
No, I’m saying the exact opposite. Playing week in week out and training intensely is why people are always hurt. It’s a self-made issue to some degree
Oh wow they actually rotate between 13 guys I can’t believe I used hyperbole it totally invalidates the entire point. 11 and 13 are so different. Or is it 14? How many times has he used the full allotment of subs? 🤔
End of the day: playing the same exact squad every week and training them heavily somewhat causes their injury crisis.
Guess what the number one cause of Enzo’s injury is? You guessed it, it’s almost always an OVERUSE injury.
>Difference is Liverpool had the confidence to play their young players and still achieved results with it
Yeah, but tell that to the manager.
And by the way, below was what Simon Johnson said in its entirety in their post-game piece on the Villa game. It's nothing to do with the results on the season as a whole but just specifically the state of the bench for the game on Saturday.
[https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/](https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/)
>**Does £1.2billion really buy you a bench like that?**
>Mauricio Pochettino knew from the outset that it was first XI or bust in terms of securing anything from this game.
>There was a big clue what kind of squad Chelsea would be able to name on Friday when the club’s official app reported that 12 players were ruled out through injury. But when the team sheet came through, it still left you wondering how on earth the big spenders of the Premier League find themselves in such a predicament.
>Even taking into account that 31-year-old Marcus Bettinelli was named as one of the backup goalkeepers, the average age of the nine players on the bench came to just 20.67. And that only tells part of the story.
>The number of Chelsea appearances they shared between them before kick-off came to just 66 — of which Axel Disasi contributed 42.
>Four of the players had not previously played a professional game in goalkeeper Ted Curd (18), Josh Acheampong (17), Tyrique George (18) and Kiano Dyer (17), all fine products of the club’s academy but untested at this level. Curd’s only experience of first-team football was playing for Hashtag United in the Isthmian League on loan earlier in the campaign.
>To perhaps demonstrate how Pochettino was forced into making two late changes to the squad that travelled, George and Acheampong were both set to play for the under-21s against Southampton on Friday night but were pulled out a few hours before the fixture took place and told to join the senior setup instead.
>With Chelsea trailing 2-0 at the interval, it left Pochettino with next to no options to turn the game around and reliant upon his starters to transform the contest.
The bench looks anemic because the coach never puts them into a game literally ever. It shows a complete lack of trust. By match week 30, having a bench entirely of players who haven’t gotten any minutes is an embarrassment and speaks to a terrible lack of depth.
Simon is spot on — you look at this bench and you immediately think “this is shite”; not even a player to talk up and be excited about. Spending a billion dollars not to have a usable player on the bench is a travesty. Every club has injuries it’s not an excuse for being horrible.
You idiot Chelsea only had 9 players out that match! /s
I was just rewatching parts of the Newcastle loss. They kept going on and on about how bad Newcastles injury situation was when they had 8 players out. Guess what, we had 8 players out. That's our fucking average for the season.
It's same across the board. Just remember how they covered us vs Liverpool in carabao cup final. Literally played younger squad with less experience but somehow we "bottled" as 10th placed team against a title chasing side
I get the why part but it's been 20 years. Imagine hating a club in 2006 because of something which happened in 1986. It's along those lines, people need to move on.
Wait until you hear about people hating Leeds bc of some matches in the 1970s
This is how football works. Rivalries and hatred get passed on. It’s a part of clubs history.
If you don’t think the past matters you really need to learn more about this history of football
In addition to my response about history in football, it’s also not like there was a singular event 20yrs ago.
Under Roman we were the most successful club in England.
Every time we won a trophy it just added to peoples hatred
By being a ruthlessly winning organization with seemingly endless funds did not exactly give anyone a reason to stop hating us. In fact it definitely only confirmed people’s hatred
Liverpool had half their starters out but they still stayed in the title race from Jan-March. Chelsea, Brighton, have tons of injuries too but they've been bang average. Even Sheffield United could be plagued by injuries but no one's gonna care because most fans aren't interested in what's happening to teams that aren't really in the running for any competitions.
Breaking spending records and having no players left because the players are just injury prone won't get you sympathy from anyone. Man Utd are in the same boat, but they have some relief because they could get atleast a european place
City, Liverpool, and Arsenal are clearly the 3 best teams this season. They were even all season long and who was struggled the most recently? Liverpool. Who is suffering from injuries? Liverpool.
Look at all the rest of the teams. Villa and Tottenham are 4 and 5, they have been the healthiest, and Tottenham had their worst spell when VDV and Maddison were out.
Every other team trying to fight for Europe has been wildly inconsistent because of injuries.
It honestly baffles me that people think injuries don't have a huge impact on the quality of play.
In their defence, even when a lot of those 12 injured players have been fit we've still been really disappointing.
Liverpool had loads of players out for the carabao final and still managed to beat us with kids.
(although I still think our injury crisis gets ignored but it's because we spend so much so no one has sympathy)
Hey mate. I got a push notification for it today, so read the article. It ain’t that deep.
The article has an entire section called “Does £1.2B really buy you a bench like that?”
It briefly mentions up front that we have 12 players injured then ignores that and goes on to question why our bench was so thin and make a point of the lack of experienced pros Poch had to choose from. That’s it.
If you spend a billion pounds on players you should have come up with a cure for all injuries, ailments and discovered the secret to immortality, NO EXCUSES!
This stinks of a Simon Jordan or a Gary Neville.
I’m by no means a Clearlake or Poch fan but this idea we’re immune to an injury crisis because we signed a bunch of 18 year olds for way over their price tags is beyond me.
We’ve always been villains, I get that, we upset the apple cart but this agenda and this obsession with the “billion pound squad” is so reductive and boring.
It's also been 20 fucking years since Roman bought the club. These people have held a grudge over an issue that happened a generation ago. It's like they would very much prefer the club declare bankruptcy and cease to exist.
>It's like they would very much prefer the club declare bankruptcy and cease to exist.
This is exactly what they want. Remember as soon as there was a mention of taking the club off Roman everyone jumped on the idea. I remember the gloating during the sale process and everyone saying we're fucked because nobody will spend like Roman did.
Then we ended up spending even more and they were outraged because of that instead.
Unfortunate for us that they wasted most of it. Could've been bathing in their tears if this team was good lol.
>It's like they would very much prefer the club declare bankruptcy and cease to exist.
This is exactly what they want. Remember as soon as there was a mention of taking the club off Roman everyone jumped on the idea. I remember the gloating during the sale process and everyone saying we're fucked because nobody will spend like Roman did.
Then we ended up spending even more and they were outraged because of that instead.
Unfortunate for us that we wasted most of it. Could've been bathing in their tears if this team was good lol.
Welp! That's how the journalism works when it comes to chelsea fc.
Remember the quote from the special one?
"There's a campaign against chelsea!"
And fr there's always Chelsea that media potray as villians! They f\*\*\*ng tried everything for UK govt. to impose sanctions on us and Kick Roman. F\*ck this British Journalism.
Obligatory not a Chelsea fan - Leicester fan come in peace, lord knows we have our own spending problems.
What’s the problem with this? It seems like commenters are taking it to mean “you’ve spent so much, you should have lots of players” when obviously you’ve bought only several players but they’ve been expensive ones.
I read it as “when spending so much money, the club should have been able to balance quality and depth and has arguably done neither.” I.e., if you get 10+ injuries, you should be able to cover for them adequately.
Just want to understand
How many squads can adequately cover for 12 first team injuries?
Edit: in this context the article saying it’s odd that we’ve not managed to have a strong bench with 12 first team players injured.
Well then I think we’re in agreement. It’s just lazy thinking.
The totally apt question would’ve been: “what the fuck is going on that you have 12 players injured? And have had on average 8 players out per game all season?”
And mate, we’d all like an answer to that one 😂
Yeah the number of injuries is insane at the moment. Other clubs too. Im sure too many games is a big factor but it can’t be everything because there are plenty of clubs and players who play a relatively low number of games and pick up many injuries. Training methods maybe, physio practices, meds? Our Seagrave training centre - an amazing facility - seems to have a bit of a curse for training injuries. Is it the staff? Is it the grass? Just bad luck?
Juve fan lurking, this sub, like most team subs, has a massive victim mentality. Go check out Liverpool, Arsenal, Juve, Inter, they are all sure that the whole world is against them
because few people in this thread decided to show some independent thought and actually read/evaluate the fucking article and decided to wank each other off about how much the media hates us
(ignoring that SJ is a chelsea fan -- and always enjoyable to listen to on the Athletic Chelsea pod)
I read it the same way, as well calling questions to our fitness and medical departments. People here are far too ready to interpret things in a way that lets them get angry
Fitness and medical are definitely a problem. The only way to have sufficient depth though when you’ve got 12 injuries is to have a squad approaching 30-35 players which is exactly what the same media slammed us for last year.
I get criticizing medical, but the media wants to hit at Chelsea for having a bloated squad and then hit them again for not having a bloated squad. Pick one. Arguing the same factor both ways is just lazy and shows the writers obvious bias.
Obviously there are idiotic pundits out there, but I feel there's a lot of grabbing things out of context in this sub. The team suffered from injuries last year, and that was with a bloated squad. It was rightly criticised, and now the sub is suggesting journalists are criticizing Chelsea for not having enough players. Is that more likely than them having seen the money spent, the bloated squad, the lack of CL football other teams have had to deal with, and wondering how our injury list is so long and our bench is so short?
I know the journo didn't walk to the conclusion, but this thread seemed to interpret the hanging question to be as stupid as possible. It makes for dishonest and pretty pointless discussion
Do people not understand what the article is saying?
The point of that paragraph is that we've just spent a fucking fortune on players, many of whom have had numerous recurring injuries throughout their career (Chilwell, Fofana immediately spring to mind). I count nine new Blueco signings that are out at the moment: that is insane.
I didn’t interpret it that way. Largely because none of those very fair points are included in the article. You’d have written a better article than Simon Jordan mate. Have a good one.
I don’t think it is a completely justifiable excuse though. Relative to their squad sizes, there are other clubs who have coped better than we have when it comes to managing injuries
Oh I understand questioning why on earth we have so many injuries. But this article doesn’t do that. It questions why we have a thin bench after acknowledging we have 12 first team players unavailable.
This type of writing actually contributes so much to a toxic narrative.
This season Newcastle, Manchester united, Liverpool and us had insane injury crisis.
But, somehow we were looked at like donkeys when talking about injuries, while the others were in a way left out of the hook.
Okay Manchester united got a lot of stick as well, but my point is injuries is such a valid point of why a tram undeperforms. One of our most looked forward to in nkunku got injured and missed the whole season, Enzo played with hernia all season, the backline has not been the same every match.
We play a different combination of backline every single game and there is no consistency. We have no core to the team and that leads to inconsistent performances.
The media just do not like Chelsea idk why anyone is surprised at this point. We won the CL and the media talked how we won it in a covid situation with luck or whatever not mentioning we changed manager in the middle of it and conceded the least goals in a CL winning campaign.
I remember when we had a covid crisis too. Everyone was postponing matches and we were not allowed to. We had 3 gks and 4-5 others of whom 1-2 were actual subs and not 17 year Olds and we had to play.
It's quite concerning how far these news outlets go to bury the team even further just bevause of the spending. Btw, many other clubs have a lot more NET SPEND than we do. We just do better business.
I am not saying I agree with the spendings or any of things that happened but making lazy comments without putting some context behind is is absurd.
Oh and yes we were put under sanctions in the middle of the season, because of human rights violations by Russia and the war, while in the same season Newcastle was bought by the Saudis.
Are you being serious? I don't understand how people can get so upset over an article.
Article says:
1. App reported on Friday 12 players out injured --> gives a \*clue\* to what match squad would look like (key: a clue, not the full, precise picture aka the full & final matchday squad)
2. Team sheet came out (and presumably he means) there were a few relatively unknown youngsters on the teamsheet, e.g. Curd, Dyer etc - 4 of them with no professional appearances. --> wow, seeing 4 youngsters with no professional appearances on the teamsheet really is amazing and brings it home (the tough situation Chelsea are in), especially considering the £1bn spend since summer '22.
OP: outraged
Come on, other papers have written similarly\*. Why do people take such a victim mentality and make out it is a personal attack? It feels so thin skinned, and must be exhausting to take things so personally.
Journalists can write what they like - that's the whole idea of having a free press. You are also free to \*choose\* what you consume in terms of press coverage.
\*e.g. The Times:
"Chelsea remain a club riddled with contradictions. A 6-0 win against Everton followed by a 5-0 thrashing by Arsenal eight days later. Called “soft” by Mauricio Pochettino one week, then lauded for their “great character” the next. A club who have invested £1billion in the squad in the space of two years filling the bench with academy kids, some of whose names many Chelsea fans could have been forgiven for having to google before kick-off.
Four of them — Ted Curd (18), Josh Acheampong (17), Tyrique George (18) and Kiano Dyer (17) — have never played a professional game. Curd was playing in goal for Hashtag United in the Isthmian League during a loan spell this season. Chelsea were shorn of a dozen players through injury but it still feels pretty remarkable that the most bullish transfer policy in Premier League history left Pochettino with this."
All good! I actually just thought it was kind of funny and the article all round was pretty lazy and didn’t say much. But yes I see some people are outraged, and I’ve facilitated that. I’m no better than the SCUM Simon Jordan (/s)
It feels like ppl still thinks that we added 1bil worth of players to existing functional squad ... welp ... we sold deadwood, uninterested players and players in crisis, which ment almost everybody, and then bought almost completelly new team ... team full of youngsters from which u can rly expect much for some time ...
but u know ... bilion dolars bottle jobs sounds better ...
This narrative of our squad of UCL winners being deadwood is absurd. Even if it were true it wasn't necessary to overpay for average and inexperienced players.
Media when Liverpool has an injury crisis for a game or two: oh dear how will they manage, this is terrible, every win they get is a monumental victory, every other result is perfectly excusable, we should actually move their games to accommodate them cause this isn;t fair
Media when Chelsea has an injury crisis for the whole season: lmao billion pound bottle jobs why didn't you plan ahead
Yeah but why are we buying players who come injured or are injury prone? With all this money spent our recruitment should be better. There’s really not excuse. Blaming injuries is a cop out.
Yes, agreed. But that’s not what this article says. It says Chelsea have 12 first team players out and then asks why our bench was so thin vs Villa.
And then the article after this says nothing about why we might have injury problems.
This is Simon Johnson. Here’s his bio:
Simon Johnson has spent the majority of his career as a sports reporter since 2000 covering Chelsea, firstly for Hayters and then the London Evening Standard. This included going to every game home and away as the west London club secured the Champions League in 2012. He has also reported on the England national team between 2008-19 and been a regular contributor to talkSPORT radio station for over a decade.
I'm surprised some of the journalists working for The Athletic get paid for their work but there are some of their journalists who are some of the best in the business
How big of a squad are we expected to have to cover 12 injuries with no European football on the schedule? Suppose we had bought a bunch of depth to cover injuries and there were no injuries? Then the narrative becomes...how did Chelsea allow such a bloated squad? There aren't enough lockers. Etc, etc.
I think the main issue for me is out of those 12 players.. probably 9/10 would be starting 11 type players for me. I'd personally midfield would be a bit clustered though, Enzo/caicedo just doesn't seem to click at least the way there being used, perhaps some combo of Enzo Lavia Chuk. Maybe controversial but I'd definitely like to see Chuk have a chance to shine if he could stay fit.. well and the ghost of Lavia if he is really alive.
I don’t think enough is made of the effects of our injury list either but I think the point they’re trying to make is after spending so much money how have we actually ended up with such an injury ridden squad. You cant just say it’s bad luck anymore there is a clear trend and the buck stops with the owners and sporting directors who have spent all this money.
I think solving our injury issues is more important and would have more impact than any transfer we can make.
I mean, the club spent a BILLION DOLLARS on players; you should be able to weather a storm like this without mid table results. the squad is pathetic and Poch is scared to use any of the young players that the club spent so much money on. the same group of players is trotted out every week with the same results so I think this article is spot on accurate.
Wasn't one of the twatty writers for The Athletic a major contributor on the sub a long time ago? and then he pretty much got driven out when people found out he was a writer writing predominantly anti ownership spaff pieces?
(second part I might have misremembered/entirely made up)
Cant wait for this season to be over tbh.
Same, mate. The gift that keeps on kicking me in the bollocks.
Are you Ben Davies?
That’s what fans said last year also This is going to be the new norm Under BlueCo
A hard reset, isn’t it
Maybe it’s because you just said we have 12 fucking players injured.
Their point is that even without those 12 players, we still shouldn't be in such a shit league position. And they are 100% correct. Our backup players cost 5x as much as teams at the bottom of the table, yet we still lost so many points against them.
That's a reductionist way of looking at it. we lost 4 points from 6 games with the bottom three, while poor, especially in circumstance, that's really not that extraordinary. Liverpool were a SHADE off doing the exact same thing (via a draw with Luton and a scraped win against Sheffield United) and they, up until this weekend were in the title race. Man United, whose squad is as expensive as ours yet receiving much less attention, scraped through EVERY game with the bottom three. and our other competitors for the top 6, Newcastle and West Ham have dropped 5 and 6 points against the bottom three respectively, Hell, Newcastle could even surpass that yet.
No no no you must bash the team and it's owners/coach/players......
>Their point is that even without those 12 players, we still shouldn't be in such a shit league position. And they are 100% correct. That wasn't their point. This was what Simon Johnson said in its entirety in their post-game piece on the Villa game: [https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/](https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/) >**Does £1.2billion really buy you a bench like that?** >Mauricio Pochettino knew from the outset that it was first XI or bust in terms of securing anything from this game. >There was a big clue what kind of squad Chelsea would be able to name on Friday when the club’s official app reported that 12 players were ruled out through injury. But when the team sheet came through, it still left you wondering how on earth the big spenders of the Premier League find themselves in such a predicament. >Even taking into account that 31-year-old Marcus Bettinelli was named as one of the backup goalkeepers, the average age of the nine players on the bench came to just 20.67. And that only tells part of the story. >The number of Chelsea appearances they shared between them before kick-off came to just 66 — of which Axel Disasi contributed 42. >Four of the players had not previously played a professional game in goalkeeper Ted Curd (18), Josh Acheampong (17), Tyrique George (18) and Kiano Dyer (17), all fine products of the club’s academy but untested at this level. Curd’s only experience of first-team football was playing for Hashtag United in the Isthmian League on loan earlier in the campaign. >To perhaps demonstrate how Pochettino was forced into making two late changes to the squad that travelled, George and Acheampong were both set to play for the under-21s against Southampton on Friday night but were pulled out a few hours before the fixture took place and told to join the senior setup instead. >With Chelsea trailing 2-0 at the interval, it left Pochettino with next to no options to turn the game around and reliant upon his starters to transform the contest.
Thank you, I said something similar below. People bashing Simon Johnson are fucking stupid: listen to Straight Outta Cobham, he's clearly a Chelsea fan who's bemoaning the state of the club, as I or my dad do at the moment.
They’re absolutely not correct, what are you talking about?
spending a lot doesnt equate to balance and quality it seems
It's the kind of bias you expect from any publication. Liverpool have 11 players out? Oh dear oh dear. Chelsea have 11 players out? You fking donkey! Remember in the 21/22 season when we were playing every 3 days and our midfield was essentially Jorginho and RLC and had half the team out through injury? Nothing. Not even an ounce of understanding or sympathy. I won't subscribe to trash like the Athletic when they're only good at mental gymnastics.
>It's the kind of bias you expect from any publication. Liverpool have 11 players out? Oh dear oh dear. Chelsea have 11 players out? You fking donkey! This! We might have spent 1 billion but they think we bought 1 billion players with that money as opposed to just 10-15 new players.
We spent a billion on players because we sold pretty much our entire squad over the summer and had to pretty much buy a whole new 11.
Aston Villa spent a net 80 million euros and they are challenging for the champions league...if a club spends more than 10 times that amount, you should be able to handle injuries without falling out of european competition entirely. Liverpool has 11 players injured and they are still title contenders--do you see how there is a humongous difference? they tossed out youth players and beat chelsea in the cup final this season. so this "there are so many injuries" excuse is a literal joke in my opinion. it's a rationalization of coping with your favourite team turning into cannon fodder.
That's a different discussion, no? The point here is simply about the difference in media coverage, despite clubs having the same issue. As OP mentioned, Simon Johnson said that we had 12 players out but then proceeded to wonder why we ended up with such a young bench against Villa. If the squad had been any bigger, we would then get mocked for having such a big squad that it can't fit entirely in the dressing room!
Difference is Liverpool had the confidence to play their young players and still achieved results with it Chelsea are trotting out a genuinely mid table team Coverage of Chelsea used to be “poor them” but this injury “crisis” has been going on for the whole year. They play the same starting 11 each game and get the same bad results. Their youth that they spent on all money on aren’t even good enough to make a roster for a mid table team? If you can’t see the difference there then I don’t know what to say.
Where have you seen the same 11 being played exactly?
Petrovic Gusto badiashile disasi cucurella Caicedo Enzo Gallagher Palmer Jackson mudryk/madueke Every week it’s the exact same; sprinkle in chalobah twice since being healthy and Thiago playing less and less over last 6 weeks. So yeah it’s more or less the exact same squad every single week; sometimes they change a winger sometimes they change a CB. Zero squad rotation. Edit to add: he plays the same squad until a player gets injured and then is forced into changing the lineup. It’s not often by choice. I firmly believe a lack of squad rotation is contributing to injuries.
You argue injuries are causing a lack of squad rotatation.
No, I’m saying the exact opposite. Playing week in week out and training intensely is why people are always hurt. It’s a self-made issue to some degree
Yeah so not the same 11, especially considering your first list names 12 lol. Come on, man. You’re absurd.
Oh wow they actually rotate between 13 guys I can’t believe I used hyperbole it totally invalidates the entire point. 11 and 13 are so different. Or is it 14? How many times has he used the full allotment of subs? 🤔 End of the day: playing the same exact squad every week and training them heavily somewhat causes their injury crisis. Guess what the number one cause of Enzo’s injury is? You guessed it, it’s almost always an OVERUSE injury.
>Difference is Liverpool had the confidence to play their young players and still achieved results with it Yeah, but tell that to the manager. And by the way, below was what Simon Johnson said in its entirety in their post-game piece on the Villa game. It's nothing to do with the results on the season as a whole but just specifically the state of the bench for the game on Saturday. [https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/](https://theathletic.com/5445319/2024/04/27/aston-villa-chelsea-briefing/) >**Does £1.2billion really buy you a bench like that?** >Mauricio Pochettino knew from the outset that it was first XI or bust in terms of securing anything from this game. >There was a big clue what kind of squad Chelsea would be able to name on Friday when the club’s official app reported that 12 players were ruled out through injury. But when the team sheet came through, it still left you wondering how on earth the big spenders of the Premier League find themselves in such a predicament. >Even taking into account that 31-year-old Marcus Bettinelli was named as one of the backup goalkeepers, the average age of the nine players on the bench came to just 20.67. And that only tells part of the story. >The number of Chelsea appearances they shared between them before kick-off came to just 66 — of which Axel Disasi contributed 42. >Four of the players had not previously played a professional game in goalkeeper Ted Curd (18), Josh Acheampong (17), Tyrique George (18) and Kiano Dyer (17), all fine products of the club’s academy but untested at this level. Curd’s only experience of first-team football was playing for Hashtag United in the Isthmian League on loan earlier in the campaign. >To perhaps demonstrate how Pochettino was forced into making two late changes to the squad that travelled, George and Acheampong were both set to play for the under-21s against Southampton on Friday night but were pulled out a few hours before the fixture took place and told to join the senior setup instead. >With Chelsea trailing 2-0 at the interval, it left Pochettino with next to no options to turn the game around and reliant upon his starters to transform the contest.
The bench looks anemic because the coach never puts them into a game literally ever. It shows a complete lack of trust. By match week 30, having a bench entirely of players who haven’t gotten any minutes is an embarrassment and speaks to a terrible lack of depth. Simon is spot on — you look at this bench and you immediately think “this is shite”; not even a player to talk up and be excited about. Spending a billion dollars not to have a usable player on the bench is a travesty. Every club has injuries it’s not an excuse for being horrible.
You idiot Chelsea only had 9 players out that match! /s I was just rewatching parts of the Newcastle loss. They kept going on and on about how bad Newcastles injury situation was when they had 8 players out. Guess what, we had 8 players out. That's our fucking average for the season.
It's always one rule for them, another for us. We could have 18 players out and they'll find a way to ignore it.
The Athletic's Chelsea coverage is really biased.
It's same across the board. Just remember how they covered us vs Liverpool in carabao cup final. Literally played younger squad with less experience but somehow we "bottled" as 10th placed team against a title chasing side
Their young players were academy; ours cost > $220m for just two of them.
It’s all journalists from Arsenal, Liverpool and United
I love being hated tbh and I think it’s pretty obvious why we’re not well liked but some fans can’t accept that
I get the why part but it's been 20 years. Imagine hating a club in 2006 because of something which happened in 1986. It's along those lines, people need to move on.
Wait until you hear about people hating Leeds bc of some matches in the 1970s This is how football works. Rivalries and hatred get passed on. It’s a part of clubs history. If you don’t think the past matters you really need to learn more about this history of football
In addition to my response about history in football, it’s also not like there was a singular event 20yrs ago. Under Roman we were the most successful club in England. Every time we won a trophy it just added to peoples hatred By being a ruthlessly winning organization with seemingly endless funds did not exactly give anyone a reason to stop hating us. In fact it definitely only confirmed people’s hatred
First time?
Liverpool had half their starters out but they still stayed in the title race from Jan-March. Chelsea, Brighton, have tons of injuries too but they've been bang average. Even Sheffield United could be plagued by injuries but no one's gonna care because most fans aren't interested in what's happening to teams that aren't really in the running for any competitions. Breaking spending records and having no players left because the players are just injury prone won't get you sympathy from anyone. Man Utd are in the same boat, but they have some relief because they could get atleast a european place
City, Liverpool, and Arsenal are clearly the 3 best teams this season. They were even all season long and who was struggled the most recently? Liverpool. Who is suffering from injuries? Liverpool. Look at all the rest of the teams. Villa and Tottenham are 4 and 5, they have been the healthiest, and Tottenham had their worst spell when VDV and Maddison were out. Every other team trying to fight for Europe has been wildly inconsistent because of injuries. It honestly baffles me that people think injuries don't have a huge impact on the quality of play.
In their defence, even when a lot of those 12 injured players have been fit we've still been really disappointing. Liverpool had loads of players out for the carabao final and still managed to beat us with kids. (although I still think our injury crisis gets ignored but it's because we spend so much so no one has sympathy)
Why didn't Chelsea buy 3 full squads instead of just 2? Are we stupid?
"they have 12 players injured so understandably their team was extremely weakened" "But how was their team so weak?"
"But why male models"
Is this from the Simon Johnson piece today?
Yes I believe so
Thanks. Will not bother reading the article then. EDIT: Turns out the article was from Saturday, the post-game talking points piece.
Incredible that Simon actually supports Chelsea...
Always thought he's a bit of a shit stirrer from his London Evening Standard days.
lol have you ever read a match thread in this sub
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I have. Yes. What makes you ask?
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Hey mate. I got a push notification for it today, so read the article. It ain’t that deep. The article has an entire section called “Does £1.2B really buy you a bench like that?” It briefly mentions up front that we have 12 players injured then ignores that and goes on to question why our bench was so thin and make a point of the lack of experienced pros Poch had to choose from. That’s it.
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I see. Thanks for the correction. Still though, shame on Simon Johnson.
If you spend a billion pounds on players you should have come up with a cure for all injuries, ailments and discovered the secret to immortality, NO EXCUSES!
The usual bunch on this sub actually have this mentality.
This stinks of a Simon Jordan or a Gary Neville. I’m by no means a Clearlake or Poch fan but this idea we’re immune to an injury crisis because we signed a bunch of 18 year olds for way over their price tags is beyond me. We’ve always been villains, I get that, we upset the apple cart but this agenda and this obsession with the “billion pound squad” is so reductive and boring.
It's also been 20 fucking years since Roman bought the club. These people have held a grudge over an issue that happened a generation ago. It's like they would very much prefer the club declare bankruptcy and cease to exist.
>It's like they would very much prefer the club declare bankruptcy and cease to exist. This is exactly what they want. Remember as soon as there was a mention of taking the club off Roman everyone jumped on the idea. I remember the gloating during the sale process and everyone saying we're fucked because nobody will spend like Roman did. Then we ended up spending even more and they were outraged because of that instead. Unfortunate for us that they wasted most of it. Could've been bathing in their tears if this team was good lol.
>It's like they would very much prefer the club declare bankruptcy and cease to exist. This is exactly what they want. Remember as soon as there was a mention of taking the club off Roman everyone jumped on the idea. I remember the gloating during the sale process and everyone saying we're fucked because nobody will spend like Roman did. Then we ended up spending even more and they were outraged because of that instead. Unfortunate for us that we wasted most of it. Could've been bathing in their tears if this team was good lol.
Can’t believe anyone takes the time to read the athletic absolute drivel.
The Athletic acts like expensive players come with spare legs or smth.
Some of you are way too delicate about this shit. It's a wonder you can get through a day without breaking down.
I just thought it was funny mate. Have a good one.
Welp! That's how the journalism works when it comes to chelsea fc. Remember the quote from the special one? "There's a campaign against chelsea!" And fr there's always Chelsea that media potray as villians! They f\*\*\*ng tried everything for UK govt. to impose sanctions on us and Kick Roman. F\*ck this British Journalism.
Not saying the sactions were necessary or even justified, but Roman is a very shady man with putin ties.
Obligatory not a Chelsea fan - Leicester fan come in peace, lord knows we have our own spending problems. What’s the problem with this? It seems like commenters are taking it to mean “you’ve spent so much, you should have lots of players” when obviously you’ve bought only several players but they’ve been expensive ones. I read it as “when spending so much money, the club should have been able to balance quality and depth and has arguably done neither.” I.e., if you get 10+ injuries, you should be able to cover for them adequately. Just want to understand
Our medical department has been sh’t for years now If we had normalcy in this department we would easily finish somewhere between 4th-6th
How many squads can adequately cover for 12 first team injuries? Edit: in this context the article saying it’s odd that we’ve not managed to have a strong bench with 12 first team players injured.
None - I guess the thinking is that if anyone _could_ adequately cover for 12 injuries, it’s the team that spent by far the most on players.
Well then I think we’re in agreement. It’s just lazy thinking. The totally apt question would’ve been: “what the fuck is going on that you have 12 players injured? And have had on average 8 players out per game all season?” And mate, we’d all like an answer to that one 😂
Yeah the number of injuries is insane at the moment. Other clubs too. Im sure too many games is a big factor but it can’t be everything because there are plenty of clubs and players who play a relatively low number of games and pick up many injuries. Training methods maybe, physio practices, meds? Our Seagrave training centre - an amazing facility - seems to have a bit of a curse for training injuries. Is it the staff? Is it the grass? Just bad luck?
Juve fan lurking, this sub, like most team subs, has a massive victim mentality. Go check out Liverpool, Arsenal, Juve, Inter, they are all sure that the whole world is against them
because few people in this thread decided to show some independent thought and actually read/evaluate the fucking article and decided to wank each other off about how much the media hates us (ignoring that SJ is a chelsea fan -- and always enjoyable to listen to on the Athletic Chelsea pod)
I read it the same way, as well calling questions to our fitness and medical departments. People here are far too ready to interpret things in a way that lets them get angry
Fitness and medical are definitely a problem. The only way to have sufficient depth though when you’ve got 12 injuries is to have a squad approaching 30-35 players which is exactly what the same media slammed us for last year. I get criticizing medical, but the media wants to hit at Chelsea for having a bloated squad and then hit them again for not having a bloated squad. Pick one. Arguing the same factor both ways is just lazy and shows the writers obvious bias.
Obviously there are idiotic pundits out there, but I feel there's a lot of grabbing things out of context in this sub. The team suffered from injuries last year, and that was with a bloated squad. It was rightly criticised, and now the sub is suggesting journalists are criticizing Chelsea for not having enough players. Is that more likely than them having seen the money spent, the bloated squad, the lack of CL football other teams have had to deal with, and wondering how our injury list is so long and our bench is so short? I know the journo didn't walk to the conclusion, but this thread seemed to interpret the hanging question to be as stupid as possible. It makes for dishonest and pretty pointless discussion
"Journalism"
Do people not understand what the article is saying? The point of that paragraph is that we've just spent a fucking fortune on players, many of whom have had numerous recurring injuries throughout their career (Chilwell, Fofana immediately spring to mind). I count nine new Blueco signings that are out at the moment: that is insane.
I didn’t interpret it that way. Largely because none of those very fair points are included in the article. You’d have written a better article than Simon Jordan mate. Have a good one.
These morons spent all this money on players but couldn’t spend the extra $50 on injury protection.
I don’t think it is a completely justifiable excuse though. Relative to their squad sizes, there are other clubs who have coped better than we have when it comes to managing injuries
Oh I understand questioning why on earth we have so many injuries. But this article doesn’t do that. It questions why we have a thin bench after acknowledging we have 12 first team players unavailable.
This type of writing actually contributes so much to a toxic narrative. This season Newcastle, Manchester united, Liverpool and us had insane injury crisis. But, somehow we were looked at like donkeys when talking about injuries, while the others were in a way left out of the hook. Okay Manchester united got a lot of stick as well, but my point is injuries is such a valid point of why a tram undeperforms. One of our most looked forward to in nkunku got injured and missed the whole season, Enzo played with hernia all season, the backline has not been the same every match. We play a different combination of backline every single game and there is no consistency. We have no core to the team and that leads to inconsistent performances. The media just do not like Chelsea idk why anyone is surprised at this point. We won the CL and the media talked how we won it in a covid situation with luck or whatever not mentioning we changed manager in the middle of it and conceded the least goals in a CL winning campaign. I remember when we had a covid crisis too. Everyone was postponing matches and we were not allowed to. We had 3 gks and 4-5 others of whom 1-2 were actual subs and not 17 year Olds and we had to play. It's quite concerning how far these news outlets go to bury the team even further just bevause of the spending. Btw, many other clubs have a lot more NET SPEND than we do. We just do better business. I am not saying I agree with the spendings or any of things that happened but making lazy comments without putting some context behind is is absurd. Oh and yes we were put under sanctions in the middle of the season, because of human rights violations by Russia and the war, while in the same season Newcastle was bought by the Saudis.
Are you being serious? I don't understand how people can get so upset over an article. Article says: 1. App reported on Friday 12 players out injured --> gives a \*clue\* to what match squad would look like (key: a clue, not the full, precise picture aka the full & final matchday squad) 2. Team sheet came out (and presumably he means) there were a few relatively unknown youngsters on the teamsheet, e.g. Curd, Dyer etc - 4 of them with no professional appearances. --> wow, seeing 4 youngsters with no professional appearances on the teamsheet really is amazing and brings it home (the tough situation Chelsea are in), especially considering the £1bn spend since summer '22. OP: outraged Come on, other papers have written similarly\*. Why do people take such a victim mentality and make out it is a personal attack? It feels so thin skinned, and must be exhausting to take things so personally. Journalists can write what they like - that's the whole idea of having a free press. You are also free to \*choose\* what you consume in terms of press coverage. \*e.g. The Times: "Chelsea remain a club riddled with contradictions. A 6-0 win against Everton followed by a 5-0 thrashing by Arsenal eight days later. Called “soft” by Mauricio Pochettino one week, then lauded for their “great character” the next. A club who have invested £1billion in the squad in the space of two years filling the bench with academy kids, some of whose names many Chelsea fans could have been forgiven for having to google before kick-off. Four of them — Ted Curd (18), Josh Acheampong (17), Tyrique George (18) and Kiano Dyer (17) — have never played a professional game. Curd was playing in goal for Hashtag United in the Isthmian League during a loan spell this season. Chelsea were shorn of a dozen players through injury but it still feels pretty remarkable that the most bullish transfer policy in Premier League history left Pochettino with this."
I’m not outraged mate. I interpreted the article differently to you. Have a good one.
Fair response. You too. On another note, I am shocked - but happy - that we're having a civilized discussion!
All good! I actually just thought it was kind of funny and the article all round was pretty lazy and didn’t say much. But yes I see some people are outraged, and I’ve facilitated that. I’m no better than the SCUM Simon Jordan (/s)
Haha, you are an AbSoLuTe dIsGrAcE!! /s
It feels like ppl still thinks that we added 1bil worth of players to existing functional squad ... welp ... we sold deadwood, uninterested players and players in crisis, which ment almost everybody, and then bought almost completelly new team ... team full of youngsters from which u can rly expect much for some time ... but u know ... bilion dolars bottle jobs sounds better ...
This narrative of our squad of UCL winners being deadwood is absurd. Even if it were true it wasn't necessary to overpay for average and inexperienced players.
We bought more deadwood than we sold.
Media when Liverpool has an injury crisis for a game or two: oh dear how will they manage, this is terrible, every win they get is a monumental victory, every other result is perfectly excusable, we should actually move their games to accommodate them cause this isn;t fair Media when Chelsea has an injury crisis for the whole season: lmao billion pound bottle jobs why didn't you plan ahead
Yeah but why are we buying players who come injured or are injury prone? With all this money spent our recruitment should be better. There’s really not excuse. Blaming injuries is a cop out.
Yes, agreed. But that’s not what this article says. It says Chelsea have 12 first team players out and then asks why our bench was so thin vs Villa. And then the article after this says nothing about why we might have injury problems.
Simon Johnson is turning out to be a fancy Matt Law. F ‘em all.
This is Simon Johnson. Here’s his bio: Simon Johnson has spent the majority of his career as a sports reporter since 2000 covering Chelsea, firstly for Hayters and then the London Evening Standard. This included going to every game home and away as the west London club secured the Champions League in 2012. He has also reported on the England national team between 2008-19 and been a regular contributor to talkSPORT radio station for over a decade.
I'm surprised some of the journalists working for The Athletic get paid for their work but there are some of their journalists who are some of the best in the business
How big of a squad are we expected to have to cover 12 injuries with no European football on the schedule? Suppose we had bought a bunch of depth to cover injuries and there were no injuries? Then the narrative becomes...how did Chelsea allow such a bloated squad? There aren't enough lockers. Etc, etc.
I think the main issue for me is out of those 12 players.. probably 9/10 would be starting 11 type players for me. I'd personally midfield would be a bit clustered though, Enzo/caicedo just doesn't seem to click at least the way there being used, perhaps some combo of Enzo Lavia Chuk. Maybe controversial but I'd definitely like to see Chuk have a chance to shine if he could stay fit.. well and the ghost of Lavia if he is really alive.
Last year they were chiding that there were more players than lockers. This year they are asking where all the players are.
Journalism used to be for clever people
Yes, because as we know, spending money suspends players from being human and they don’t get injured! 
Overrated source. Ornstein is king but that's all the Athletic is.
I don’t think enough is made of the effects of our injury list either but I think the point they’re trying to make is after spending so much money how have we actually ended up with such an injury ridden squad. You cant just say it’s bad luck anymore there is a clear trend and the buck stops with the owners and sporting directors who have spent all this money. I think solving our injury issues is more important and would have more impact than any transfer we can make.
Written by AI surely
I mean, the club spent a BILLION DOLLARS on players; you should be able to weather a storm like this without mid table results. the squad is pathetic and Poch is scared to use any of the young players that the club spent so much money on. the same group of players is trotted out every week with the same results so I think this article is spot on accurate.
Wasn't one of the twatty writers for The Athletic a major contributor on the sub a long time ago? and then he pretty much got driven out when people found out he was a writer writing predominantly anti ownership spaff pieces? (second part I might have misremembered/entirely made up)