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Graham Potter gets ready to break some hearts as Chelsea’s super squad face Fulham – The Warm-Up


FRIDAY’S BIG STORIES

After The Splurge

Chelsea are probably done, right? Sporting directors of Europe, one last quick head count… yes, yes, all present and correct. Chelsea are done until the summer. They’ve been everybody else’s problem for the entire of January, and now they are the problem of just one man. Graham Stephen “Yes I Had To Look That Middle Name Up, Yes I Would Have Guessed Stephen Anyway” Potter.

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By our count, and not allowing for injuries, Chelsea’s first team squad currently stands at a mighty and hilarious 34 players. We’ve checked the rules and they’re still only allowed to play 11 at any one time, which means a good chunk of Potter’s immediate future will be spent not picking players, and then managing the fallout from that. We’ll find out today which of the new names haven’t made the Champions League squad. And through the season, some of the old names aren’t going to make the first team.

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We’ve touched on this before, but while nobody has a bad word to say about Potter’s abilities as a coach, he came into the Chelsea squad more or less completely untested in the art of managing a Big Squad full of Big Egos at a Big Club. We can’t speak to the egos of most of Chelsea’s new lot – one advantage of buying younger, untested players, perhaps – but we can say with some certainty that this is a very big squad.

Of course, he’s said more or less the only thing a manager can say in the circumstances: “Only a certain amount can be in squads, so there are always going to be ones who are going to be disappointed and it’s about being as honest and open and respectful and transparent as you can and again create an environment where you respect the fact that people want to play. You respect the fact that players want to compete and help the team, but they have to be patient, make sure they’re ready to perform and help us win.”

Leave the grotesque amounts of money to one side for the moment, and park the worries about whether this is going to snap football as we know it in half. As a purely sporting project, it’s absolutely fascinating: big money on inexperienced players, big trust in a relatively inexperienced coach. Whether they’re breaking Uefa’s FFP rules is a question for the lawyers and accountants, but they’re definitely trampling all over some of football’s received wisdom.

And such confidence! Big fees, long contracts, time to work: this is the behaviour of a group of people who back themselves with a ferocity that seems frankly alien. People who know they’ve got everything right, because how could they be wrong? Perhaps this is why the Warm-Up is not, as yet, a multi-billionaire. We simply do not believe.

Speaking Of Massive Squads

Perhaps it’s fortunate for Nottingham Forest that Chelsea have decided to explode the very top end of the transfer market. Otherwise all the comedy bandwidth would be reserved for their own remarkable project of accumulation. This is a club that loves signing players. So much so, in fact, that they’re still at after the transfer window has closed. Welcome to Nottingham, Andre Ayew!

That takes Forest to 30 new first-teamers for the season, which we’re assuming is a record. One that will stand for a good long time. But we’re not here to criticise. They lost almost as many over the summer, so it’s not like there’s 60 people at training every day, clogging up the swimming pool and queueing up for the exercise bikes. And if it keeps them up, then job very much done.

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And there’s the rub. What’s interesting is the fact that they’ve done this and they’re sitting in 13th place. Not safe, not yet – by our estimation everybody from Palace downwards could still end up in the sticky stuff. But we’re certainly not expecting them to fall apart from here. They look basically fine.

Like Chelsea, they’re breaking the rules. Teams are built, so tradition has it; built slowly and gradually over time. Players get to know one another, patterns form, systems strengthen. And Steve Cooper is here to say: nah. Get me enough bodies and a base level of talent, and we’ll throw together some magic. Indeed, having worked with Cooper before at Swansea, Ayew is almost too sensible a signing, in this ongoing project to upend everything we know about staying in the Premier League.

Uncancelled

Chelsea were the noisiest, Arsenal perhaps the canniest, but of all the big club manoeuvres that unfolded over January, it was Joao Cancelo’s sudden switch from Manchester City to Bayern Munich that really intrigued. It came out of nowhere, rumour-wise, but it quickly became clear that there was a lot going on behind the scenes.

Taken on purely footballing terms, there’s a certain logic to it: Guardiola is clearly a huge fan of the emerging Rico Lewis on one flank, while Nathan Ake has been perfectly acceptable over on the left. Joao Cancelo doesn’t get to be an automatic first choice just because he’s capable of doing dreamy big passes with every part of his boot.

On the other hand, a guy who can do dreamy big passes with every part of his boot – that’s a guy who might come in useful. Which is why this is being read as a squad harmony story: some players smile through their time on the bench, and some do not, and the latter bring everybody down. Being suspicious types, we also reckon that there’s a little bit of a message in here, from Guardiola to the rest of his squad. None of you are indispensable. Not even the guy who can do dreamy big passes with every part of his boot.

And maybe, just maybe, a little bit of personal relief for Guardiola as well. We can’t imagine he regrets the sale of Gabriel Jesus too much, given the arrival of Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez; the numbers of the former and the promise of the latter. But if he’s not being kept up at night by the nagging suspicion that he sold the wrong full-back, then we admire his mental fortitude.

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City’s problem is now Bayern’s opportunity. Joao Cancelo went straight into the team for their German Cup tie again Mainz, and within 20 minutes he had an assist: he took on his man, squared him up, went again, and then sent a perfect cross over to Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, who Van Basten’d it back past the keeper. If this kind of thing keeps happening, Bayern just might be in with a shout of the title. You heard it here first.

IN OTHER NEWS

We weren’t following the game particularly closely, so we can’t be sure there hadn’t been some long-running beef building up here. But even if there had been, what on earth is Gabriel Paulista up to? You’re only 2-0 down! There’s 20 minutes left! This particular kind of pointless violence is for injury time! That’s why they call it injury time!

(Legal notice: that is not, in fact, why they call it injury time.)

RETRO CORNER

Happy birthday to Tim Flowers. England international, Premier League winner, League Cup winner, twice named in the Premier League team of the year… we’re not going to look at any of that. No, we’re going to look at that time it bounced over his shoulder. A perfect piece of physical comedy.

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The wide range of the sweeper-keeper is often understood as a tactical phenomenon, allied to greater fitness and the awareness that keepers are footballers too. But what if there were a more material explanation. Look at that mud patch. You reckon you could get out of that thing quickly?

HAT TIP

Sneak preview of next week: at long last, we’re going to get to see the British government’s proposals for fixing English football. And as Miguel Delaney notes for the Independent, “In 160 years of codified English football, there has never been anything like an attempt at a holistic assessment of the sport and what it should look like.”

What will this one say? There’s a lot of detail in the link above, but the headline is that it “will call for the much-debated football regulator” and “announce its intention to properly recognise the community role of clubs and ensure there cannot be future collapses like Bury. Measures for that will be a strict club licensing system that will insist on financial security, owners able to prove the source of their wealth, fan engagement on key decisions and a block on joining other breakaways.”

But what about the money? Well, that’s where it gets “complicated”: “In essence, the great financial success story that is English football in 2023 has no body overseeing where it’s going, or assessing what is actually good for the sport … The Football Association are described as ‘having long abrogated that responsibility’ but that is largely because the Premier League just became too big for it. It earned far too much money.”

COMING UP

A fun early test for Graham Potter’s diplomacy skills, as Chelsea take on Fulham. But if you don’t fancy that, then there’s FC Augsburg vs. Bayer Leverkusen, Scunthorpe United vs Barnet, West Brom vs. Coventry or Athletic Bilbao v Cadiz for you to choose between. Something for everybody.

Have a good weekend. We’ll be back on Monday.

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