Only one thing can fix Chelsea – and they’re not going to get it this summer

Only one thing can fix Chelsea – and they’re not going to get it this summer

The defeat for Chelsea on Monday against Nottingham Forest should not have surprised anyone. The Blues had lost their past five league games, and a sixth being added to that list always felt likely.

The win over Leeds at Wembley the week before gave supporters a shred of hope, but those who have been watching this team for the past two months always knew it was going to take much bigger changes than one somewhat fortunate win to stop this total collapse.

A winning culture at the club has become a losing culture.

There doesn’t seem to be a player in the squad capable of holding their team-mates to a higher standard. The petulance they constantly show towards referees and opposition players is all the more embarrassing given how little effort they’re willing to make when the ball is in play.

They go into games resigned that they might lose, without any fear of the consequences of those defeats. None of them fight for each other, or even for their personal pride.

The messages about working hard and “addressing problems” we hear in every news conference from manager after manager sound so hollow to us that we can only imagine how empty they sound to the players.

A top coach could fix Chelsea – but no top coach will take the job

A top coach could change the psychology of the group for the better. But no top coach is going to take the job. There is a real possibility that Chelsea lose all of their remaining four games this season. The psychological damage is hard to overestimate.

There is a lot of talk about this being a “crucial” summer, but even the best-case scenario only really gets Chelsea back to where we were a year ago.