WACADAY
Chelsea welcome Manchester United to Stamford Bridge on Thursday night for a football match that, like last Sunday’s game between Manchester City and Arsenal, is almost entirely impossible to predict – albeit for completely different reasons. With the benefit of hindsight we can probably forecast that it will be more entertaining, a bit like chancing across two drunk, washed-up prizefighters swinging haymakers at each other in a pub car park. At the start of this season the notion that an April league fixture between Chelsea and Manchester United would be between struggling to finish fifth and a team struggling to get into the top half of the table was unlikely but not entirely implausible. It is a measure of how far and quickly these two once-mighty clubs have fallen that less than a decade ago it would have been unthinkable.
Big Cup winners three years ago, Chelsea currently sit 12th in the table behind, in no particular order … five of the traditional Big Six, Aston Villa, three different teams that were tipped for relegation before a ball was kicked this season, a team so consistently ravaged by knack in recent months that their mascot Monty the Magpie could get a game against Fulham this Saturday, and a club whose manager is unpopular with at least half the fanbase because his team is too defensive and boring. Of course if anything sums up the chaotic manner in which Chelsea has been run since being taken over by Clearlake Capital, it is the fact that they are also in a worse league position than their feeder club Brighton, from whom they have recruited several overpriced and underperforming players, a manager and most of his coaching staff who have since left the building, not to mention two of the south-coast club’s recruitment team. Indeed, so high is the number of millions that Chelsea’s owners have hosed in the direction of the Amex Stadium that one suspects it might have been more financially prudent for them to just buy Brighton instead.
They have also shovelled plenty of dosh into Mauricio Pochettino’s bank account and for a man whose team is so underwhelming the Argentinian seems to be getting a remarkably easy ride. It’s certainly the case compared to other top-flight managers who are failing to deliver the goods, one of whom he will be up against on Thursday. Chelsea go into their latest game on the back of a dismal and somewhat fortuitous draw with a basement-dwelling Burnley side that played over half last weekend’s game at Stamford Bridge with just 10 men. Having watched his players sleepwalk through yet another 90 minutes, an exasperated Pochettino has hit upon the novel solution of – Football Daily checks notes – suggesting they wake up earlier.
Having told reporters that even after 15 years as a coach he still arrives at the training at or before the crack of dawn because he is desperate to keep pushing himself, he reckons his players should adopt a similar approach rather than think they can take it easy because they’ve hit the big time by signing for Chelsea. “What do [the players] need to do? It is to arrive early. It is to work more. It is to run more. It is to be more focused. It is not now to arrive to Chelsea and [think] I am so good because people believe that I am so good but I do the minimum effort. No, it is more responsibility now. For us, we feel the responsibility. Never be in a comfort zone. If you are in a comfort zone, you drop your level, you drop your standards.” And in Chelsea’s case, you drop down the Premier League table like a ton of bricks.
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Join Will Unwin from 7.30pm BST for hot minute-by-minute coverage of Liverpool 4-0 Sheffield United, while Tim de Lisle will be on deck at 8.15pm for updates from Chelsea 1-1 Manchester United.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It was something horrible and I could not stop myself. It was a very sad and ugly thing that they were saying. I grabbed him and asked why he was insulting me. My attitude was not aggressive, I just wanted to ask him why” – Spanish football’s commitment to combatting racism is under fire again after Rayo Majadahonda keeper Cheikh Sarr was handed a two-match ban for going into the stands to confront a man who had allegedly racially abused him during a third-tier match at Sestao River Club, which was then abandoned. “It seems the offender gets off scot-free … the message seems to be that anything goes,” added Rayo skipper Jorge Casado.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I know there is next to nothing written about non-league football teams, but the heartbreaking news of the year so far is that Luke Garrard, sainted manager of Boreham Wood FC, the team that beat Bournemouth in the fourth round of the FA Cup a couple of seasons ago, is leaving the club after eight and a half years in charge (and he’s still only 38). This link is the club statement and is testament to how some manager departures should be announced – with dignity” – Geoff Hall.
Andrew Pechey makes an excellent point (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). He notes that Noble Francis got ignored for prizeless letter o’ the day earlier in the week, only to receive the gong for a somewhat lesser submission yesterday. With that in mind, may I direct you to my work published on 12 and 19 March. If readers are gonna get this meta, so am I” – Mike Wilner.
The moniker Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe (Football Daily passim) just doesn’t feel right to me. Surely he’s been big for quite some time, likely throughout his entire adult life and almost certainly prior to his knighthood? Ergo, Big Jim was knighted rather than Sir Jim became Big, post-gong? Sir Big Jim works better in my view. A pedantic point but surely an important one?” – Martin Fisher.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Martin Fisher.
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