Coaches left to provide answers after day of Chelsea turmoil following Roman Abramovich sanction - The Warm-Up
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Updated 11/03/2022 at 10:07 GMT
Chelsea men and women won in very peculiar circumstances. Meanwhile, Leeds lost, Norwich lost, Watford lost: things are getting very messy down at the bottom of the Premier League, but at least they're all down there together. And an awful lot of Europa League football happened all at the same time.
Chelsea's German head coach Thomas Tuchel applauds as he celebrates at the end of the English Premier League football match between Norwich City and Chelsea at Carrow Road Stadium in Norwich, eastern England, on March 10, 2022.
Image credit: Getty Images
FRIDAY'S BIG STORIES
Blow Out The Candles
Yesterday was Chelsea Football Club's 117th birthday. Nothing big planned, apparently. The men's team were away at Norwich, the women's were off to West Ham. Oh, and the club's owner had all his property seized by the government, virtually ending the club's ability to take in or give out money. You know, normal birthday stuff.
It is unclear whether there was cake. If there was, it is unclear whether that cake now belongs to the nation. If it does, though, just a little slice. Just a sliver. Just— well, a bit bigger than that. Bit more. There you go.
There is, presumably, never a good time for a club to be impounded due to its owner's alleged close relationship with a war-making leader. But modern football places a great emphasis on preparation, on players being in the right frame of mind before each game. Careful routines of visualisation and psychological self-care serve to help each footballer get themselves into the optimum condition to perform in a sport where the tiniest margin can make a difference. None of those routines, we're guessing, involve sitting around wondering if Liz Truss is now technically one's boss.
One of the more quietly dispiriting features of Chelsea's approach to this whole situation has been the way in which the coaches have been left to field the questions. Thomas Tuchel might well have nuanced and sensitive views on international geopolitics, high-level finance, and the place of the club within those two opaque systems. Or he might not give toss who he works for, beyond the pay packet and the job opportunity. Either way, he wasn't hired to talk about this, and you can understand why he's been getting a little nettled at being asked about it.
But in an odd way, the freezing of the club makes things a little clearer for Chelsea's coaches: they now have something against which they can manage. It is clarifying when something actually happens, as compared to worrying that it might. Here's Emma Hayes, speaking to Sky Sports before last night's game against West Ham.
I think for all the questions everybody has — players, fans, staff — we have to give the club time to work through that. And I know you hear this from football managers, because ultimately this is the only thing I can control, the next 90 minutes, and I think it's only right that the players can switch off for the next 90 minutes on what has been a difficult day. I know from my end, I'm a leader of this team and we're going to have to navigate a difficult period, and one where I don't have all the answers for it, but I certainly have an amazing dressing room, amazing fans, amazing employees at the club that deserve the very best from us this evening.
A collectors' item, then: a top-level manager urging their players to switch off before a game. We can easily imagine Tuchel saying something similar to his charges before the game against Norwich: we can't deal with that now, put it out of your minds, this is a great club of great people, there's fans come all this way to see you, they're singing, they're chanting… oh, they're chanting "Roman Abramovich, Roman Abramovich", that's a bit weird, never mind that.
The football is, of course, a vanishingly minor concern in the wider context, and even just thinking about the club, the livelihoods of Chelsea's hundreds of employees are certainly more important than three points here or three points there. But as Hayes understands it, the wider club deserves performances from the players, and in that context the switching off seemed to work. The men beat Norwich 3-1, the women went one better at West Ham, winning 4-1 in the end. Pernille Harder and Ji So-yun combined for something beautiful. All in all, about as good an evening for West London Blue as could be expected.
Leeds Are In Big Trouble
It's a tantalising dream, the new manager bounce. Time it right, and it can be the difference between staying up and going down. Time it wrong, or miss it altogether, and all that's happened is the introduction of new problems on top of old.
Judging by the two games we've seen so far, you can understand why Leeds chose Jesse Marsch to succeed Marcelo Bielsa. Presumably there are nuances and differences that will become more evident over time, but there seems to be a definite continuation in terms of style. And that's important, when changing managers mid-season. So Leeds are still pressing away, still running and running and running, still working on these intricate little ratatat exchanges that threaten to be brilliant… and still defending like every outfield player bears a specific and powerful grudge against Illan Meslier.
If last weekend's 1-0 loss to Leicester City was an encouraging loss, last night's 3-0 drubbing by Aston Villa was the precise opposite: comfortable for the winners, profoundly demoralising for the losers. Leeds have lost a lot of games this season, 15 in all, but generally they manage to at least make life interesting for their opponents. Here, Villa looked like a team from a division above making light work of a cup tie.
Perhaps the one consolation for Leeds, aside from the imminent return of Patrick Bamford, is that they have company. With the exception of Newcastle, who are on something of a tear, and Burnley, who are at least picking up a few points here and there, nobody in the bottom eight is in any kind of form. Watford and Brentford have taken a mere four points from their last five games; Brighton and Everton just three; Leeds and Norwich a big round yawning zero. Last night Norwich conceded three at home, Watford four away. Both lost.
This is good news for anybody hoping for a dramatic relegation scrap, of course, but it's also good news for each of the teams stuck down there. Relegation misery loves relegation company. And of the four teams below Leeds, three have already rolled the dice on a change of coach, with limited success. The new manager bounce doesn't have to be a big bounce. It just has to be bigger than all the surrounding bounces.
Europa Here, Europa There
Friends, it happened again. Your super soaraway Warm-Up tried to watch a million Europa League and Conference games all at the same time and ended up confused, stunned and overloaded, like a sci-fi recluse pinned before a bank of flickering monitors. We were found, hours later, mumbling to ourselves: "The information… the data… the flow… I saw it all."
And we were trying to watch Leeds as well!
But from the frazzled shards of our broken brain, we were able to assemble a few moments of use. For instance, when it comes to getting results in Europe, Rangers might just be the best team on the whole continent. Knockout football is a simple business: take your chances and you'll be alright. Rangers took theirs — big penalty, big header, big other goal we completely missed — while Red Star did not. Well, they took some of them. But then VAR took them away again.
We were able to appreciate West Ham turning in a delightfully old-school English-team-in-Europe performance. A stout defensive performance unpicked by one moment of sharpness, as Sevilla's Munir El Haddadi cleverly decided to leave himself completely unmarked on the far side of the mixer. You could almost hear the 1990s harrumphing to itself about English naivety in the face of continental cunning. Is that even allowed? The mixer exists for a reason!
We also saw Barcelona's attack not scoring any goals against Galatasaray, and Barcelona's defence not conceding any against Galatasaray, and we wouldn't care to put money on either part of that being repeated in the second leg. And apparently there was a Leicester game, and Atalanta and Leverkusen shared five, and PSV and Copenhagen shared eight, and, and, and, and we're going to have to have a sit down. There is, if we're being honest, perhaps a little bit too much football.
IN OTHER NEWS
Not David Beckham. Not Trent Alexander-Arnold. Not, er, that other player with the amazing right foot that we've temporarily forgotten the name of, and wouldn't even have mentioned were it not for the rule of three. So the big question is: what else can Calum Chambers do that we just don't know about? Origami? Double-entry bookkeeping? Is he a surprisingly forceful tenor? Does he restore stained-glass windows? Can he fly?
RETRO CORNER
Happy birthday to one of English football's national treasures, Garth Crooks. Youtube is full of his idiosyncratic punditry, but you don't really see his goals anymore, and that's something of a shame. A few of them were pretty special. Plus it's a good excuse to feast on all that late 70s/early 80s football stuff that everybody likes: Motson, mud, Davies, short shorts, "Ricky Veeliar", Glenn Hoddle. All the good stuff.
COMING UP
West Brom take on Huddersfield in the Championship, Atlético Madrid host Cádiz in La Liga, and Lille play St-Etienne in Ligue 1. And then the weekend stretches out before us, overflowing with fresh football, like a broad field of green grass to the hungry goat.
Have a good one, and we'll see you back here Monday morning, bright and early.
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