Chelsea need manager with Premier League experience and leaders on the pitch to emerge from ‘rock bottom’ – Reporter Notebook | Football News

After a damaging defeat to Nottingham Forest in the Premier League on Monday, Jamie Carragher described Chelsea as ‘a broken club’. Here, Sky Sports News’ chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol breaks down the issues at Stamford Bridge this season – and how they fix them…

Chelsea have been all at sea since Enzo Maresco was allowed to leave the club on New Year’s Eve. They took a massive risk by appointing Liam Rosenior, somebody who had no experience of managing in the Premier League, as their head coach. That didn’t work out.

Then they took another big risk in appointing Calum McFarlane as the interim head coach. Again, somebody who has very limited experience of managing, let alone managing in the Premier League.

Things have been so bad at Chelsea since the start of February that they are bottom of the Premier League form table – they have got fewer points in that time than Tottenham.

Chelsea have won two and drawn two in the Premier League in that time. The only sides they have beaten in the Premier League since the start of February have been against releagted Wolves and Aston Villa.

In total, Chelsea have lost 13 times in the Premier League this season, which is more than newly-promoted Leeds and Sunderland.

You can say it’s the players’ fault, but watching Chelsea week in, week out, it looks like these players have not come to terms with the fact that Maresca has left the club.

Maresca was somebody who got them into the Champions League, won two trophies in his first season, but behind the scenes, things went wrong.

There were problems with personal relationships with other people at the club, lots of people falling out and it got so bad that he walked out.

I think Chelsea were quite glad to see the back of him, but looking back now, it was a big mistake to let him go because he was definitely onto something and the players believed in him.

You can say it’s the player’s fault, but watching Chelsea week in, week out, these players have not come to terms with the fact that Enzo Maresca has left the club.

It’s a massive ask for these players, with the head coach they’ve got in place at the moment, to beat Manchester City and Pep Guardiola [in the FA Cup final]. Stranger things have happened… but this Chelsea side are at rock bottom.

Carragher said the club is broken and most Chelsea fans would agree with him.

‘Club World Cup win has hindered Chelsea’

I think one of the problems has been that they won the Club World Cup. Because of that, I think they thought ‘we’ve arrived. Everything we’ve done, our policies have been vindicated. We’ve proved everybody wrong’. They then carried on down that same road.

When it came to Maresca, I think they felt that he was just a head coach – ‘if he wants to go, let him go. If he thinks he’s going to get the Man City job, fine.

‘He can go and get the Man City job in the summer if it becomes available. We have got a great structure in place. We’ll just get another head coach in.’

Unfortunately, they picked the wrong person to take over.

‘Chelsea need a manager with Premier League experience’

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I don’t think it’s a situation that cannot be turned around if you’ve got the right person as the manager.

I still think big name managers will want to manage Chelsea and they can attract the kind of manager that they need this summer.

[Andoni] Iraola is a possibility, but there’s lots of other clubs after him. Xabi Alonso would be a great fit. Somebody like Cesc Fabregas has been talked about a lot, but it’d be very hard to get him out of Como. That would be another risk.

Chelsea need to get somebody with Premier League experience, somebody who can dominate this dressing room, somebody who can also say to the sporting directors and the owners at Chelsea ‘I’m in charge’.

And especially if you bought some leaders this summer, some experienced players. Why not bring in someone like Jordan Henderson as a player/coach? He has outstanding leadership qualities. He doesn’t have to play every week but the presence of someone with his standards and work ethic, on and off the pitch, would change the dynamic behind the scenes.

Chelsea need to get somebody with Premier League experience, somebody who can dominate this dressing room, somebody who can also say to the sporting directors and the owners at Chelsea ‘I’m in charge’.

Chelsea have still got a very good squad. They’ve got some world-class players, but they need a new manager and they need some leaders on the pitch.

I think their [transfer] strategy [of signing young players on long-term deals] will change this summer, they will tweak it and sign some more experienced players this summer.

‘Chelsea fans furious with De Zerbi VIP treatment’

On social media, Chelsea fans were very upset about this. They see this as another sign of what’s going wrong at the club.

Roberto De Zerbi can come to Stamford Bridge and watch Chelsea because Spurs are playing Chelsea in a massive game soon, but it feels like they rolled out the red carpet for him.

Under normal circumstances, you would give him a ticket in the director’s box, but it looks like he was given seats in one of the owner’s boxes or one of the boxes next to that. This is the VVIP treatment at Chelsea.

Chelsea fans were also unhappy about two of their sporting directors talking to De Zerbi where they could be easily filmed and photographed. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with catching up with someone you used to work with at Brighton, but in the current climate, the optics did not look good.

But the fans have jumped on this and said ‘what is going on at our club? Why are we rolling out the red carpet for the manager of our biggest rivals who we’re playing in a game next week?’

Everybody’s kicking Chelsea when they’re down. Their fans are unhappy and it’s open season on Chelsea. I totally understand that.

But I will still stick my neck out and say, if they get the right manager in and if they make a couple of smart, experienced signings, people with character, personality, leadership qualities, then I think Chelsea will be back soon.

Things can turn around very quickly.