- How football is failing 3: we have lost the abilty to analyse
- How football is failing to sort itself out Part 2: Green football off the agenda
- How football is failing to sort itself out: Part 1
By Sir Hardly Anyone
Chelsea, who have spent well above £1 billion on players in the last four transfer windows since the takeover by Todd Boehly’s consortium in May 2022, replaced Brighton in sixth place in the league this season.
And they have just lost their manager..
In 2022/23 the club came 12th in the league and went out of both domestic cups in the third round. This last season they ended up sixth, got to one domestic cup semi-final and one cup final.
In 2022/23 their top scorer was Havertz with nine. Last season it was Palmer with 25. And yet the manager is leaving after one year, after more than doubling the number of goals the club scored in the league this season compared with last.
It is as they say “a funny ol’ game.” Although maybe some sense can be made of the matter when we look at the tackles, fouls and yellow card tables
For rather oddly Chelsea put in 16% fewer tackles than Arsenal but got 13.6% more fouls given against them. In the odd way that referees work Chelsea got 32.7% more yellow cards for fouls than Arsenal, but overall 69.35% more yellow cards than Arsenal from all situations. They were in fact sixth in the league table but way out on top of the yellow card league.
| Club | Tackles | Fouls | Yellow from fouls | All yellow |
| Arsenal | 17.4 | 10.3 | 1.13 | 62 |
| Chelsea | 14.6 | 11.7 | 1.5 | 105 |
| Difference | -16.1% | +13.6% | +32.7% | +69.35% |
So what happened? Did the now ex-manager demand that something should be done about the referees? Did the owners suggest that they didn’t like Chelsea’s image of being the dirtiest club in the league?
This season, Chelsea got over double the number of yellow cards that Manchester City received. Was that because the manager expected something that the owners couldn’t deliver? For example, a better arrangement with PGMO?
| Club | Tackles | Fouls | Yellow from fouls | All yellow |
| Chelsea 2022/3 | 19.5 | 10.4 | 1.58 | 2.02 |
| Chelsea 2023/4 | 14.6 | 11.7 | 1.50 | 2.76 |
| Difference | -4.9 | +1.3 | -0.08 | 0.74 |
| % this season v last season | 74.9% | 113% | 94.9% | 137% |
If you ever wanted to see a set of bonkers figures here the table above offers it. Tackles down to 75% of the previous season’s level, but fouls up by 13%. Yet the yellow cards for fouls down by 5%, while the overall level of fouls up by 37%.
It could well have been that the chairman said to the manager, “We can’t go on picking up yellow cards like this, it is bad for our image and we keep losing players.”
To which the manager might well reply “I’ve cut the fouls by a quarter and yet the number of fouls against us has risen by 13%. We are getting fewer yellow cards for fouls but the number of yellow cards overall is up by over a third. This is bonkers.”
And bonkers it certainly seems to be, although it would be helpful if someone had some statistics on where all those non-foul Chelsea yellow cards came from.
Which really gets us to the heart of the matter. The record number of yellow cards ever was set by the notorious Leeds United side of 2021/22 who got 101 cards. Now Chelsea hold the record as the dirtiest (or was that naughtiest?) team not just last season but in Premier League history.
In fact in the season as ESPN spotted “Chelsea have only played two matches without a player picking up a booking this season (Dec. 6 vs. Manchester United and May 2 vs. Tottenham). ” They also pointed out that Chelsea got six cards in a single match on Christmas Eve against Wolverhampton Wanderers who themselves managed to get 100 yellow cards this past season.
The most booked player was Caicedo who cost Chelsea around £115 million last summer and picked up 11 cards. Fortunately for Chelsea they moved Havertz to Arsenal, where he also picked up 11 cards in the league. Fortunately for Arsenal hardly anyone else got carded.
By way of comparison, ESPN tell us that, “Only four players have ever been shown 14 yellow cards in a Premier League season since 2008-09.” What is interesting is that none of them played for teams at or near the top of the league: Cheick Tioté (Newcastle) Lee Cattermole (Sunderland) José Holebas (Watford), Étienne Capoue (also Watford) and Palhinha (Fulham).
Which rather goes to suggest that having the most cards in the league does not normally equate with a high league position.
And just to rub it in ESPN add, “The only club in Europe’s top five leagues to have been shown more yellow cards than Chelsea is LaLiga side Getafe who have received 121 in 36 league matches.”
But Chelsea’s biggest problem, as the Telegraph puts it, is that of Mauricio Pochettino being the third manager to leave Chelsea under the rule of Clearlake Capital-Todd Boehly. So not many serious managers will fancy the task. We might think back to Arteta’s performance in his first season and a half at Arsenal. Arsenal stuck with him, despite the ceaseless baying of the journalists and some bloggers.
So we wonder, how many matches next season before journalists start baying for a managerial sacking? I’d guess, four.
The bluebottlers sack another manager , I assume almost no one was surprised or even noticed (I fall into both categories , having only learnt Pochettino’s fate in the above post ). The pride of one part of the Fulham Road are carrying on in the way they did with Abramovic at the helm. Todd must be thinking that the past 20 years or so which saw Chelsea sack managers for fun is what you do.
Are you going to tell him ?
So, now that the vultures are circling , who are we going to rescue from their ‘Shedsea hell’ ?
Maybe they want the ball more than Arsenal did