'Sporting directors must be next to go'

While in hindsight the clues were all there that Enzo Maresca was on his way out - from the cryptic comments about a lack of support, to the failure to attend the post-match news conference on Tuesday - it still has all come crashing down very quickly for a coach who was the Premier League's manager of the month for November.

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Maresca's unhappiness with things behind the scenes was palpable, and clearly it was felt internally that the cloud around him was affecting results. The Blues made it one win in seven Premier League games by failing to beat Bournemouth.

Chelsea are now looking for their fifth permanent manager since being bought by the current ownership in May 2022. The higher that number gets, the more embarrassing the situation becomes for those owners and the people they have appointed to run the club.

While Chelsea fans were hardly universally positive in their views on Maresca, they are far more united in their dislike of sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. These are the people who are appointing the managers who keep getting fired, and they surely must be the next to go after failing with yet another appointment.

Those failures, combined with their largely dire record in the transfer market since taking control in 2023, is more than enough evidence that they are a bigger problem than any individual coach. The ownership continues to take a lot of flak too, in part for keeping faith in the sporting directors.

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A new managerial appointment will be made in the coming days - but until things higher up the chain change, it seems inevitable we will be back in this same place in a year or two.

Find more from Will Faulks at Chelsea News