Chelsea don’t play football again until after Christmas and to be honest I’m pretty relieved about the break.
Chelsea need this rest, Graham Potter needs this rest and our injured players need this rest to recover. Certainly January might look a lot less bleak to us, but going into the World Cup, it’s certainly not very bright at the moment.
Newcastle saw our third consecutive Premier League defeat, four defeats in our last five games, no Premier League win in six games, three wins in our last nine games in all competitions, things are absolutely dire at the moment.
Chelsea will sit eighth in the Premier League at Christmas, and whether we are transitioning and going through a rebuild into a new project or not is just unacceptable.
I’m here to rebuild, I want to rebuild, but we’re Chelsea, and we also need to see at least 100% effort in every game, and we need to see results. Neither excuses, nor that “another day we would have scored”, because I am tired of hearing and saying this.
I am here supporting and endorsing Potter; I still want to believe that he is the man and that he can succeed at Chelsea. I’m not going to turn against him. But when we come back after the break, we really need to see big improvements and we really need to start getting results, there’s no two ways about it.
I’m prepared to give it time and patience, but we also need to see that line of progression go up and not go down, whether that’s a slow climb or not, it just needs to be going up. And right now, it’s falling.
I’ll conclude by saying again that for me I’ve made peace with that we’re just not good enough, our team lacks real quality, and the players lack real intensity and fight. That’s exactly where we are. Potter can be legitimately questioned, as I have too. But our problems have deeper roots than who is the manager, and it will take some time to sort this mess out.
