Club Divisions on our Favorite Road to Uncertainty: Navigating Chelsea's Wild Ride under Clearlake BlueCo

Far too much has been made of Mauricio Pochettino vs Enzo Maresca as of late, but not a lot of Chelsea fans are asking the right question:

what have we gained from all this posturing?

Is igniting the flames of debate, splitting the fanbase down the middle in an endless cycle, tweaking every little thing about this team, and resetting the project every few months all a fun little ploy from Clearlake BlueCo to entertain the Chelsea faithful, or is are they just setting our beloved club back another 5 years? I often find myself torn between both worlds; These guys do seem to mean well, but they just don't seem to be very good at their respective jobs either.

Their only saving grace is, Chelsea are currently third in the table, on the chase for the Premier League title, making things pretty hard for our title rivals, and scoring quite a lot of goals too ... but are we actually even good again? I don't think so.

Table Sourced Directly from The Barclays Premier League

For context, Chelsea are the only club to face every team in the PL top 6 so far, but the top 6 is currently comprised of Chelsea, Brighton, and four teams that took points off Chelsea.

Chelsea are also the only club not to face any of the newly promoted clubs, but they have faced two of three clubs in the relegation zone (Palace and Wolves): Chelsea failed to beat one of them.

To make matters even less interesting; Chelsea have also already faced 4 clubs in midtable! In 3 of those games, Chelsea accumulated a +2 GD, and against West Ham, we added 3 to our cumulative GD, putting us above Arsenal and *checks notes* .... Nottingham Forest.

So all signs do point to Chelsea having a decent start to the season under Maresca, but it’s certainly not a tough one: just the same old tale of a team making things harder for themselves, again and again, because they hate building momentum between seasons

The only other question on anyone's minds right now is: would Chelsea have been this good under Maurcio Pochettino?" Yeah, Probably

You see, what's really fun and interesting about this Chelsea project right now, from a narrative sense, is enough games have passed to be able to definitively compare Pochettino and Maresca on a head-to-head basis, with Maresca having accrued 19 points after 11 league games, with Pochettino's gaining 16 from the same fixtures.

Graphic by /u/iamkickass2 on /r/Chelseafc on Reddit

Theoretically speaking, from a stats perspective at least (using the graphic just attached above here), Enzo Maresca is projected to have 65 points by the end of the season, which puts him in the Frank Lampard, Maurizio Sarri, Roberto Di Matteo, and Mauricio Pochettino category of Chelsea managers.

But there is one ultimate upside to Maresca's appointment which would prove to be an unmovable hurdle to Poch in these legacy debates;

Enzo Maresca has the most remarkable injury record for any squad in the season so far

...But he does have a dedicated B team for dead rubber cup games, we do seem to have players carrying knocks and hiding it from the media, and we do seem to have have "dealt with" half of the players that did come up injured for the grand majority of last season, so did Maresca really even improve much in that category?

Graphic sourced from user Absolute Chelsea on x.com

From this list, Benoit Badiashile, Marc Cucurella, Carney Chukwuemeka, Ben Chilwell, and Christopher Nkunku are currently in B team purgatory, with two of them not even getting cracks in that secondary squad. Trevoh Chalobah and Lesley Ugochukwu are out on loan, Reece James and Romeo Lavia are still in and out of injury, and Robert Sanchez doesn't really have a history of long injuries. Wesley Fofana is the only remnant of that dark spell who has since kicked his injuries, but doesn't being in "rehabilitation" for an entire year generally improve your injury record? Think about it.

Top 3 is nice but it’s just narrative fodder at this early stage of the season; The football is fun but it’s not conducive to winning anything meaningful; The vibes are great but fans are still always mad about something; The players are good but we still don’t have a “best XI” because Enzo Maresca is still getting to know his team.

So, with all that being said and done, let’s summarize this little thinkpiece of mine:

- Are Chelsea finally back on track? Yes

- Are Chelsea finally good again? Maybe

- Are Chelsea fans finally happy? Obviously Not

And one final question (I’ll leave this one blank for you)

Has the Chelsea board been vindicated in their decision to part ways with Pochettino and reset the Chelsea project for a second time in two seasons?

__________

Before I sign off, I just want to make one thing clear: This isn't necessarily an outward criticism of Enzo Maresca, in fact, I put this all on Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali, Paul Winstanley, and Laurence Stewart: the four horsemen of Chelsea's club apocalypse; They are, in fact, the actual face of the club, and even prime Jose Mourinho couldn't possibly save us from what's coming to them in this coming season.