13 January 2023 , 07:52
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Graham Potter has always come across as a man grounded in reality rather than leaning heavily into superstition or spirituality but the Chelsea head coach might have gone to bed last night wondering if there is some higher power conspiring against his reign at Stamford Bridge.
After their 2-1 loss at Fulham, a sixth defeat in eight across all competitions, Potter was asked if he feels everything that could go wrong is going wrong.
When Joao Felix loses control and gets sent off almost an hour into a lively debut and Denis Zakaria limps off as the latest addition to the treatment room, it could easily feel that way.
Yet for all the uncontrollable factors that are currently making the Chelsea job, according to Potter, the toughest in football, there are equally as many troubling signs from a team that is underperforming in every department.
Among the chief concerns is the increasing evidence that some senior players appear to be going through the motions.
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The malaise was epitomised by an easily missed moment of absent-mindedness, perhaps even laziness, five minutes before half time at Craven Cottage.
Koulibaly summed up Chelsea's disjointed display (PA)And it involved one of the two most disappointing signings of last summer’s transfer window: Kalidou Koulibaly.
The centre back, a £33m arrival from Napoli in July, had attempted to clear the ball only for it to clatter off Trevoh Chalobah’s head and out for a throw-in.
But the Senegal captain then inexplicably dawdled as the eventual match-winner Carlos Vinicius crept behind him and received possession.
A more fleet-footed forward would have punished a sleeping defence but, belatedly alerted to the danger sneaking in behind, Chelsea recovered from a moment that should never have happened in the first place.
Potter's Chelsea hit a new low in their defeat at Fulham (PA)It was only a small snapshot on a night when Potter’s Chelsea plumbed new depths – but it also neatly encapsulated how grave their situation is becoming, how sloppily some of the individual players are performing and why many supporters may have already decided that patience is running thin with a man brought in as the head coach of a long-term project.
Potter’s job is to get the team playing as close as possible to their maximum ability and yet here he was, again, admitting that they had not applied “the basics” well enough.
The furious reaction from a substantial portion of the away end at full-time would suggest that another defeat against Crystal Palace on Sunday will produce a toxic atmosphere at Stamford Bridge.
Many of the issues at Chelsea are not Potter’s doing and the past three weeks do not offer proof that he is out of his depth at this level.
It can be simultaneously true that he is finding it hard to get a tune from the dwindling number of fit players and suffering greatly from problems he cannot affect.
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Then again many of them were inherited and well known when he left the comfort of his successful and still improving environment at Brighton.
Last summer’s recruitment drive at Chelsea makes less sense with each passing month – on top of an error-prone Koulibaly, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s expensive arrival from Barcelona is destined to end in disaster, while Raheem Sterling has dazzled only fleetingly before being injured last week.
Aubameyang failed to get off the bench at Fulham (Offside via Getty Images)Whisper it but the seeds of some issues may even have been planted during the final years of the Roman Abramovich era when it comes to a lack of joined-up thinking. The short-termism of the previous owner is now coming back to bite them - hard.
“It’s really frustrating, incredibly challenging,” Potter, who increasingly has a shocked expression on his face, said last night. “I feel for the supporters.”
Their furious response to his acknowledgement as he walked towards the tunnel would suggest that feeling is not reciprocal.
He has a mountain to climb – and could badly do with some of the experienced figures in his changing room helping the ascent instead of producing lapses in concentration that would make a schoolboy blush.