Chelsea season preview, picks, predictions: Questions aplenty as Blues aim for Premier League rebound

Over the past 12 months, Chelsea have spent hundreds of millions on some of the most heralded young talent in world football. This summer brought the appointment of a head coach in Mauricio Pochettino whose defining achievement was forging a contender out of prospects. A manager with a point to prove and a squad ready to learn: it’s a blueprint to success. Why, then, is it hard to shake the sense that Chelsea are not really on the right path yet?

Perhaps that is because there already seems to be a significant disconnect between what Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali say and what the faces of the ownership consortium actually do. A new era of sensible spending and patience in the dugout brought with it a string of baffling additions, some of whom were out of contention within a matter of weeks after arriving, and four separate coaches taking charge of the Blues. A team who had perennially competed for silverware ended the season in 12th.

Since then, Chelsea’s response has been… curious. They have strengthened three of their domestic rivals through the sales of Mateo Kovacic (Manchester City), Kai Havertz (Arsenal) and Mason Mount (Manchester United). Between that and a mini exodus of veterans to Saudi Arabia, the wage bill that ballooned at Stamford Bridge last season has been brought rather back into line. It might be further if takers can be found for vestiges of the old regime in Hakim Ziyech and Romelu Lukaku. Meanwhile the age profile of the squad skewing dramatically towards young talent with headline additions in the form of Axel Disasi, Nicolas Jackson and Christopher Nkunku.

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The latter might be the only player to have arrived in 2023 who it is easy to imagine Roman Abramovich splurging on, ironic then that the knee injury he suffered in preseason is likely to at least sideline him for the opening match of the season, perhaps more. Over the past two seasons in the Bundesliga, Nkunku proved himself to be a star, a genuinely elite talent capable of winning matches by himself. It is in keeping with the Chelsea, the Murphy’s Law years that Boehly has ushered in that Nkunku is now out with a knee injury for perhaps more than three months.

For many of those who will surround him when he does make his return in the winter, the picture is much less clear. Jackson has started well in preseason and enjoyed a fine end to his time at Villarreal but has only 12 career goals to his name in Europe’s top five leagues. Andrey Santos and Cesar Casadei excelled in summer youth tournaments: is that at all translatable to the senior level? After bright beginnings in the English game, can Levi Colwill, Enzo Fernandez and Reece James be leaders in a youthful squad? Oh and will the latter, perhaps the only world-class player in the squad, be fit for the vast majority of this season?

Even if the answer to all those questions is yes, there are no guarantees whatsoever that this is a team capable of achieving what was once the bare minimum at Chelsea: Champions League qualification. Even if Tyler Adams and Moises Caicedo arrive — and the mood music at Brighton is they are growing more determined to hold on to the Ecuadorian — the midfield looks a little light on senior players. Kepa Arrizabalaga and Jackson seem like they will start the season as goalkeeper and center forward rather by default, players who will probably need to be upgraded on in years to come if a challenge is to be mounted against the Manchester Citys of the world.

All of this uncertainty would be fine if you could feel certain Chelsea are ready for the long rebuild that ought to lie ahead of them. After all, they have in Pochettino a manager who is at ease working with a more youthful squad and who proved at Tottenham that he can build something on uncertain foundations. Are ownership and the fanbase ready to wait out a few more down years, however? No matter what Boehly said when he took over, his pulling of the plug on Graham Potter and in particular Thomas Tuchel suggests he and his co-owners are eminently capable of slipping into the habits of their predecessors.

Pochettino seems to understand that patience is not a word in the Stamford Bridge dictionary. 

“It is a process that needs time, but in football, you can’t ask for time,” he said. “We know we need to deliver now. My message to everyone here is: ‘We are at Chelsea and we need to win. Today, not tomorrow.'”

Is this a squad equipped to do so? For the first time in a generation, you find yourself taking a pause before deciding. Over recent years, the defining players of this Chelsea team might well have been someone like Eden Hazard, N’Golo Kante or even Havertz. These were blue-chip recruits, bequeathed on managers who would occasionally struggle to forge a cohesive group but could rarely question the talent they had at their disposal.

This new Chelsea may yet be defined by Jackson or, in particular, Mykhailo Mudryk: expensive, long-term bets whose upside is altogether more hazy. Given time and placed under the right tutelage, it could coalesce into something special indeed. For 20 years, however, time has been the most finite resource in west London.