“Mismanagement all around” – Sporting directors slammed for second bad window | OneFootball

The January transfer window is closed, meaning it’s time to have a look back at what business our controversial sporting directors did over the last month.

There were a lot more “outs” than “ins”. While it’s useful to get rid of some of these underused squad players – you don’t get credit for clearing up a mess you made. And the problem issues – depth in midfield, reliable striker backup, a world class goalkeeper – remain unsolved.

The London is Blue podcast said pretty much the exact same thing in their show today covering the window. Presenter Nick Verlaney put it very well by asking the simple question – are Chelsea a better team now than they were in January? His answer was pretty clear.

“Our sporting structure has a lot of egg on their face right now. It’s bad business across the board here. I mean, you bought players only to loan them immediately,” Verlaney said.

You’re bringing back players who should have been with the squad all along. It looks like a lot of mismanagement all around. And if you ask me right now if Chelsea have a better squad for the second half of the season than they had for the first half – I think the answer is unequivocally: ‘no’.”

Strong argument Chelsea have wasted two windows going sideways

Cesare Casadei signs his Torino contract.

You can even expand the question to further back – are we a better team than we were a whole YEAR ago? From the regular first team, we’ve basically lost Conor Gallagher (who was consistently good) and replaced him with Pedro Neto (who is not consistently good, and not even always in the team).

There’s a very strong argument that we’ve at best gone sideways, and in some ways gone backwards, at vast expense, through two windows now.