BlueCo and Behdad Eghbali have admitted to making mistakes during their ownership of Chelsea. When they look back at their four-year tenure, the sacking of Thomas Tuchel has to be right up there.
When they took over from Roman Abramovich in 2022, the owners embarked on a five-year plan in which they decided to target young players in the hope that they would be challenging for the league title.
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Four years down the line, Chelsea finished tenth in the Premier League. The main problem is a lack of experience and leadership, with BlueCo going heavy on young players and failing to complement that.
There have been plenty of other problems under the current ownership, with a scatter-gun approach to the man in the dugout not helping. Tuchel was the first manager that BlueCo sacked after taking over.
Thomas Tuchel, in Cesar Azpilicueta’s words
Tuchel lasted little over 18 months in the Chelsea job, winning 60 of his 100 games and guiding Chelsea to the 2021 Champions League title when his tactical masterclass saw the Blues beat Manchester City.
Martin Keown recently said that BlueCo should never have sacked the current England manager, and now, Cesar Azpilicueta has shared what he really thought of Tuchel while playing under the ex-Chelsea boss.
Speaking to BBC’s World Cup Preview, Azpilicueta said: “There’s a couple of things to be fair in terms of football. He arrived, if I remember, it was like a day before of a game we were playing Wolves at home.
“He made it very clear through a first session at Cobham how he wanted us to play. In the team meetings we had, especially the first ones, he made it very clear what he wanted. That was the first impression.
“Since then, we started building the way he wanted to play at half-time, the changes he could make. So the team grew in four months; it was incredible. I think it was hard to predict from the first meeting.
“As a person, he was very close to the players. It was also after COVID time, so the building was half empty, and we enjoyed a lot of time together. I was his captain, and we shared a lot of thoughts.
“He was very close to me and to the group of senior players. So we built a very strong relationship,” Azpilicueta said, recalling how Tuchel made an immediate impact, resulting in the Champions League.
Thomas Tuchel boasts the best win rate of any BlueCo manager
Ever since BlueCo came in, Chelsea have had six permanent managers while Bruno Saltor, Frank Lampard and Calum McFarlane have worked as interim bosses. None boast the win rate of England boss Tuchel.
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Liam Rosenior and Graham Potter were sacked with win rates below 50%. Mauricio Pochettino managed a win rate of just over 50% at a difficult time, and Enzo Maresca was just a shade under the 60% mark.
But Tuchel remains the best manager Chelsea have had under BlueCo, and yet, he only lasted a month under the club’s owners following the takeover. BlueCo will surely regret the decision to sack him.
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