After the omnishambles, Chelsea could still win the Premier League next season

For all the catastrophising of this Chelsea season, the sheer heft of the club means that they can still attract the interest of the elite level of coaches.

Hindsight may have 20/20 vision, but the build-up to the Champions League quarter-final matches between Chelsea and Real Madrid was strange, nevertheless. For a few days prior to each leg, there was a general suspension of disbelief in the evidence of our own eyes, as though somehow or other the managers involved would be able to lean on some form of shamanism to defy everything we knew about both teams.

But when the chips came down, the tie turned out exactly as we might have expected in the cold light of day. Real Madrid were too good for Chelsea over the two legs. There was a brief moment during the first half of the second leg when it looked as though there could be a route back into the tie, but that flickered with N’Golo Kante’s first-half miss and was finally snuffed out when Rodrygo made the aggregate score 3-0 with just over half an hour to play. Super Frank, it turned out, couldn’t summon the spirits required to overcome such a tall order.

So it’s open season on Chelsea, addressed with ill-disguised glee in the press. ‘Chaotic.’‘Season of disarray.’‘Woeful.’  And the waters of this ‘crisis’ have been lapping at the toes of Todd Boehly. This isn’t surprising; after all, he is one of the very few constants of this Chelsea season. There was considerable schadenfreude to be had in the footage of angry supporters confronting him as their team slipped to another home defeat against Brighton.

The club has acquired so many new players – the majority of whom are young and very talented – that blaming them for everything that has gone wrong this season has felt like a somewhat futile exercise. The same goes for that revolving door of managers. Including Bruno Saltor (and it’s questionable whether he should even be included, considering that he was only in charge for one match), Chelsea are on their fourth of the season, and while the shortcomings of Graham Potter have been forensically studied, it increasingly feels as though there has been something wrong with the institution of the club itself this season rather than individuals caught in the storm.

But if this season effectively became ‘over’ for Chelsea upon this particular defeat – despite tongue-in-cheek commentary suggesting that they could yet get relegated – what of the future? Well, the first thing to say is that Chelsea have been before. In the middle of the last decade, they went from winning the Premier League, to finishing in 10th place in the table, to winning the Premier League again in the space of three consecutive seasons.

And it should also be added that no other football club has changed as much and in such a short period of time as Chelsea since February last year. Blue is still the colour, football is still the game. But other than the fact that they’re still playing at Stamford Bridge, almost everything else about the club has changed. New ownership. New senior management. New coaching staff. New players. If anything, it would have been more surprising if things had continued exactly as they had before the sudden departure of Roman Abramovich.

Of course, everybody knows that the ‘Big’ clubs have different expectations and aspirations to the rest. While Manchester United were being catastrophised over last season, it’s worth remembering that they only spent four days of the whole season below 7th place in the table. This heft is important. For all their problems this season, Chelsea will remain able to attract interest in their vacant managerial position from some of the most highly regarded coaches on the planet.

As Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Newcastle have all demonstrated over the last decade, it doesn’t have to take long for a team’s fortunes to be flipped on their head, providing the owners’ pockets are deep enough. Julian Nagelsmann isn’t an idiot; he knows full well that he would have his pick of whatever positions become available across the continent come the end of this season, and despite the disorder of this season, the Chelsea job would still be an extremely attractive option.

The summer will surely see a clear-out of the dead wood, even if we can’t be absolutely certain of who will be categorised as such. A pared-down Chelsea squad that isn’t hopelessly unbalanced would be a substantial improvement on this season’s misadventures, while a lack of European football next season would allow them to focus fully on reclaiming a place among the Premier League’s top four. By this time next year, Chelsea remain highly likely to be ‘back’.

And while the owners have thrown good money after bad in a manner that has bordered on nonsensical at times, the very depth of those pockets means that a properly coordinated set-up behind the scenes could identify the gaps that still exist within the squad while getting rid of all the excess baggage. It is commonly assented that Chelsea need a reset this summer. They’re in a better position than most Premier League clubs to carry out the sort of changes that are necessary to get the club back in full working order again.

Chelsea supporters have been complaining all season that “we want our Chelsea back”, and while it’s tempting to dismiss this as effectively saying “we want the guy who’d underwrite losses of almost a million pounds a week for literally decades again”, such feeling does reflect the suddenness with which the club has changed.

If we can reasonably assume that those days will not be coming back, then what is the identity that will replace it? Todd Boehly’s attempts to impose one quickly this season have fallen flat because the messaging has been so garbled. Thomas Tuchel was backed until he very suddenly wasn’t anymore. Graham Potter was the long-term project who had players thrown at him until he wasn’t anymore.

Transfer policy has been scattergun, to say the least. Meeting FFP requirements may be a challenge by the end of June, considering that last summer the window was only open for three weeks before the end of that month, and then for domestic transfers only, with other European leagues not opening theirs until the start of July.

But the floor below the wealthiest clubs is extremely thick, and the likelihood of Chelsea repeating the mistakes of this season is extremely thin. Todd Boehly probably needs to step back, stop making himself the story, and put his faith in a coach with the ability to prune the squad and offload the players surplus to requirements. Add a decent goalscorer to the better players they already have and another mid-table season feels almost impossible.

The reset is coming, and no-one quite knows what it will look like just yet. But Chelsea will be back, because that’s the nature of modern football. Those amongst us who’ve been revelling in the schadenfreude of it all should probably enjoy it while we can, because no matter how bad things might look right now, the odds remain heavily in favour of this season being a blip and normal service returning to Stamford Bridge next season. That’s what money buys.