There’s always a flipside. It goes hand-in-hand with decision making. It’s why people make ‘pros & cons’ lists and engage in a task as boring sounding as ‘risk assessment’. In modern football — at least for the handful of uber-wealthy — prolonged dwelling on risk is superfluous, as the equation seems straightforward: spend money to win things, win things to get more money to (keep and) spend.
Chelsea have underscored the legitimacy of that equation masterfully over the years. Every summer Blues supporters expect new and familiar faces to pull on blue shirts and win things. And more often than not they oblige. In fact, since Abramovich’s billions arrived at SW6, this: five Premier League titles, four FA Cup trophies, three EFL Cup trophies, one Europa League win and one mighty glorious Champions League victory.
Fans can hardly complain. Well, except for the flipside.
The top down win-at-all-costs attitude that slithers throughout the club usually finds itself coiled around the manager, tightening with each draw and/or substandard performance. Eventually the head sitting atop the starched collar is different and the team soldiers on. Each manager replacing a former knows that the team now under his command will be talented and expensive, and that the rest is up to him…or else.
Since Claudio Rainieri was replaced by Jose Mourinho after Abramovich’s takeover in 2003, this: Jose Mourinho 04–07, Avram Grant 07–08, Luiz Felipe Scolari 08–09, Ray Wilkins (interim), Guus Hiddink (interim), Carlo Ancelotti 09–11, André Villas-Boas 11–12, Roberto Di Matteo (interim), Rafael Benitez 12–13, Jose Mourinho (again) 13–15, Steve Holland (interim), Guus Hiddink (again, and, interim), and now Antonio Conte.
The flipside of this approach is that it leaves Chelsea without much of an identity beyond simply winning — a trait that’s unsustainable as an identity on its own. Chelsea either win: well done, they’re supposed to; or when they don’t: CHELSEA IN CRISIS. There’s nothing to snuggle up next to at night when, say, and god forbid, Chelsea do not win. The ‘fix’ is always to just win.
Other top shelf clubs tend to have a style and verve about them that can sometimes be seen in a player even before he’s part of that club. Elegant dribblers look as if they belong at Arsenal; English midfielders with chiseled jawlines belong at Manchester United (bar Paul Scholes); Barcelona has a lengthy lineage of midfield visionaries; the uber-talented, ridiculous, and unbuyable belong at Real Madrid; even present-day Tottenham has at least narrowed it down to Englishmen with annoying faces.
Some clubs take this a bit too far (hi Wenger), but that doesn’t mean building a home on the opposite pole is the best of ideas either. Sure, Chelsea and Abramovich have chosen the icy shore where trophies more regularly wash up, but that doesn’t mean the club shouldn’t seek a more temperate climate. A well-stocked trophy cabinet can viably serve as rebuttal to labeling this a ‘problem,’ at least until transfer windows fling open.
Without much heading, Chelsea very often stumble about when it comes to transfers; a Djilobodji here, a Falcao loan there, a Marko Marin here, a Shevchenko there, and so on and so forth. The lack of direction is also why the club have developed a rather shameful habit of trying to reacquire talent that was once crowded out. It’s also why Juan Cuadrado hates Chelsea.
Of course The Blues hit more than they miss (the club is too resourceful not to) but just barely. This is the flipside of spinning the manager merry-go-round with the lone intention of winning at all costs: no one knows what a Chelsea player looks like.
By now images of John Terry, Frank Lampard or Didier Drogba are probably your head, but that’s more to the point, those are Chelsea players that won and at all costs — a trait injected and/or exaggerated by Jose Mourinho (the last and only Chelsea manager of the Abramovich era to starkly mold a team in his image). But Mourinho’s entire shtick is woven from ‘just win!’ dogma as well, which led to the same problem: how do you find that in a transfer market?
This also explains why masses of Chelsea fans gravitated to, and relentlessly defend, Diego Costa. The bite, vigor, anger and pugnacity can feel familiar — especially if you’re inclined to take the ‘at all costs’ portion literally. But Diego also won hearts by default (Fabregas still looks weird in blue) or as a defense mechanism (Eden Hazard very much fits the description of a Real Madrid player). And that’s all before we get to the cognitive dissonance of touting a homesick player as the club’s kindred spirit.
The turbulence doesn’t just appear in the transfer market, it also extends to the well-stocked and win-everything Youth Academy. Though the Academy and Loan Army are solid business ventures that do wonders for spreadsheets, there’s a reason why John George Terry has been the only academy product to get regular playing time with the first team. If there is a true ‘bleeds blue’ Chelsea player in the academy, we have no idea what he looks like or even does.
Of course this is a bit of a nitpick. An Arsenal fan who's read this far has likely rolled their eyes a hundred times, and a Spurs fan is likely to be looking at their ‘Kept The Pressure On’ banners with rightful embarrassment. But the only reason this is worth discussing is that Chelsea‘s last shake of the vending machine of managers produced one that already feels somehow different, let’s call it cozier.
Antonio Conte is no doubt a winner of Chelsea-esque ambition, those that survive his reign tell stories of a maniac when in a losing locker room, but he’s also a teacher and an idealist. In the present the complete package is easy to trust: Chelsea are Premier League champions so the suave Italian can have anything he wants, to include all of the *unconditional love he ever wanted (*limits apply). But Chelsea won’t always be champions and will lose games — at times big ones.
Allowing Antonio Conte to establish the club as something more will require not only patience but a letting go of the mold of a recent past. The benefit of which will allow Chelsea to sell a patented vision that taps into a link to the club felt by all long before the pulling on of a cobalt blue shirt. The flipside of which guarantees the back is unlikely to read ‘Djilobodji’.
