In his latest column, Paul Merson gives his views on Chelsea’s slump in form – with the pressure growing on head coach Liam Rosenior.
The Blues are on a run of six defeats in eight matches in all competitions after Saturday night’s 1-0 defeat to Manchester United at Stamford Bridge – which leaves them in a dire situation regarding Champions League qualification.
Chelsea are seven points behind fifth-placed Liverpool with five games left after all the weekend’s results went against the Blues. Should they lose to Brighton on Tuesday night, live on Sky Sports, Chelsea could drop as far down as 11th in the Premier League table come the end of the week.
With Rosenior under pressure and Chelsea’s season in danger of slipping away, read below for the Magic Man’s thoughts on the Blues…
Chelsea are fighting to be in Europe next season
No Champions League football for Chelsea next season looks like the case now. I just don’t see how they get in, I’d be shocked if they did.
But Chelsea are fighting to get into Europe next season. And that’s no exaggeration. There are 33 games gone and Chelsea are on the same points as Brentford and Bournemouth. If Sunderland had won at Aston Villa on Sunday, then they would have gone above Chelsea.
If Chelsea don’t beat Brighton on Tuesday, they could be 11th by the end of the week. And do I expect them to beat Brighton on Tuesday? No.
Tuesday 21st April 7:30pm
Kick off 8:00pm
The only consolation is if they beat Brighton, then Nottingham Forest – then they have Liverpool in a must-win game. At that point you never know.
But Chelsea don’t play any other team in the top five apart from that. So you don’t have the chance to gain any other points, and that’s good news if you’re a team in the top five, with five games to go.
No Champions League football will be a kick in the teeth for Chelsea.
Do you think Cole Palmer will be at Chelsea playing in the Europa Conference League? I don’t think so. Manchester United will get into the Champions League, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing there next season.
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FREE TO WATCH: Highlights from Chelsea’s match against Manchester United in the Premier League
I don’t see Enzo Fernandez leaving though. Where is he going? No one’s paying £100m for him. And Chelsea aren’t going to accept a loss on him.
There’s a lot that needs to be done at Chelsea. They need a centre-forward, badly. They need a goalkeeper. They’ve got some good defensive midfielders in Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia and Andrey Santos – but they need another player in there with a bit more guile.
What do Chelsea do with Rosenior?
I don’t know what Chelsea are going to do with Liam Rosenior. You feel sorry for him in a way because it’s been hard for him. He’s come from Strasbourg into a really big job. And he was always one defeat away from pressure.
But he has overseen just two wins in eight games – with the only two wins being Wrexham and Port Vale. And it’s five wins in 15 games. It hasn’t been great.
I don’t know what the project is at Chelsea. The whole idea of the model is to make money, not to lose money. It’s to buy players, produce them and then sell them on for a profit.
You have to remember, a lot of Chelsea fans have just seen pure success. If you’re a 25-year-old Chelsea fan, you’ve seen nothing but success.
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Ahead of the game against Manchester United at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea and Strasbourg fans were involved in a peaceful protest against BlueCo’s ownership
But it’s a different model at the club. Those days of Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte, Thomas Tuchel are gone now.
That’s unless they get Andoni Iraola. But then again, he would come from Bournemouth. If they had drawn or lost against Newcastle at the weekend, there would have been no hustle, no worries.
But if he comes to Chelsea, you lose a couple of games and you’re under severe, severe pressure.
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Andoni Iraola speaks for the first time since it was announced that he would leave Bournemouth at the end of the season
And in any case, I’d be shocked if Iraola hasn’t got another job already. You don’t leave a Premier League football club without knowing you’ve got another job elsewhere.
But I don’t think top, top, top, top managers will work in the Chelsea system of: ‘we’re not going to have too much experience, do your best and get us in the Champions League’.
That’s all you’ve got to do. They ain’t got to win the league, absolutely not. They’ve just got to make sure that they make the players get better and they sell them on.
Watch Brighton vs Chelsea live on Sky Sports on Tuesday night from 7.30pm, kick-off 8pm.
