Replacing Thomas Tuchel with Graham Potter was possibly the stupidest decision in Premier League history

Todd Boehly. Crazy name, crazy guy. Something is rotten in the state of Chelsea. Football clubs, like fish, rot from the head and the pong of dysfunction was hard to miss yesterday.

atching the visitors surrender to Manchester City, it seemed incredible that less than two years ago they beat them in the Champions League final.

A yawning gulf now lies between the teams with very little chance of being bridged in the foreseeable future.

No-one could have foreseen the disruption caused by Roman Abramovich’s abrupt departure from Chelsea. But Boehly has made a bad situation infinitely worse.

Since taking charge the American has exhibited a nightmarish combination of ignorance and over-confidence. The greatest asset he inherited was Thomas Tuchel. Replacing him with Graham Potter was possibly the stupidest decision in Premier League history.

This isn’t hindsight. Plenty of people said it at the time. Tuchel hadn’t just won the Champions League with Chelsea, he’s also the only manager to bring Paris St Germain to the final of that competition. Just two years ago he was both FIFA and UEFA’s Coach of the Year.

The feeling of senselessness surrounding his dismissal was exacerbated by the fact that on September 1 Chelsea gave a two-year contract to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who’d previously worked well with Tuchel at Borussia Dortmund.

Six days later they sacked the manager in what looked like a fit of pique over a Champions League defeat by Dinamo Zagreb, which probably wouldn’t have mattered much by the end of the group stages.

The sacking on its own was foolish enough. But the choice of replacement propelled it into the higher realms of lunacy. Nothing in Potter’s career suggests a capability to manage one of Europe’s top clubs. The biggest trophy he’s ever won is the Swedish Cup he bagged in 2017 when managing Ostersunds.

His record with Brighton was praiseworthy but, as Manchester United found after appointing David Moyes and Spurs after doing likewise with Nuno Espirito Santo, there is an enormous difference between over-achieving with a mid-level club and actually winning something with a big one.

It was almost as if Boehly looked down the table, noticed which smaller club was doing best at that moment and decided he’d take their manager. A few seasons back he might have appointed Chris Wilder or Sean Dyche. If he’d fallen out with Tuchel this week perhaps he’d have gone for Marco Silva who currently has Fulham one place ahead of Brighton.

Potter’s appointment was celebrated in some quarters cross channel because it gave an English manager a rare opportunity at a top club.

But Chelsea have been down this patriotically minded route before. It failed with Frank Lampard and it will fail with Potter. The sad truth is that putting an English manager in charge of an elite team is like sending Fr Dougal Maguire to do a funeral.

Chelsea’s current manager is doomed. As doomed as a teenager in a slasher movie who volunteers to go outside and check the noise coming from the woodshed. Like Moyes at United and Nuno at Spurs, there’s no prospect of this appointment ending in success.

The only question is when the axe will fall. Boehly should take Macbeth’s advice, “if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.” But the owner’s plutocratic reluctance to admit mistakes could enable Potter to stagger on for some time yet.

That will be hard to swallow for Chelsea fans used to Abramovich’s penchant for quickfire replacements of managers he felt weren’t working out.

Often criticised, this trigger happy policy proved remarkably successful. Now the supporters may have to suffer the unusual experience of seeing the club go into decline under a lame duck manager. Small wonder away fans chanted the names of both Tuchel and Abramovich yesterday.

Tuchel’s dismissal was preceded by a run which saw the team earn 10 points from six games. This, it was suggested, wasn’t good enough for Chelsea. Potter’s team has taken 15 points from 11 games since while making early exits from the Carabao Cup and FA Cup, competitions in which Chelsea reached the finals last season, only losing both on penalties.

The dismissed manager was also criticised for falling out with key players. Yet under Potter many of Chelsea’s stars look like they’re operating a Work to Rule.

It’s ironic that Hakim Ziyech, Mateo Kovacic and Christian Pulisic, all allegedly unhappy with Tuchel, have been perhaps the worst players under his successor.

A moment just before half-time when Jorginho knocked a routine ball past Kovacic and over his own end-line seemed telling. The Italian and the Croatian, two world-class midfielders, looked like they’d have preferred to be playing anywhere else at that moment.

Kovacic went off at half-time, along with Kai Havertz whose lazy handball to concede the penalty from which City made it 2-0 epitomised the team’s lack of rigour under Potter. Jorginho lasted until just after the hour when he and Ziyech sloped off.

They may have lost some players with injuries but Chelsea still have a lot of very expensive talent playing very badly indeed. Boehly will probably splash out big money in the transfer window, as he did at the start of the season. But what’s the point if the manager has no experience working with top class players?

Chelsea’s post-Abramovich era could end up looking like Manchester United’s post Ferguson era and last even longer.

Because finding the right manager is tough but getting rid of the wrong owner can be almost impossible.