Rosenior sacked for Xabi Alonso as broken Chelsea fixed for profit in four easy moves | OneFootball

Chelsea are in crisis on and off the pitch.

After four Premier League wins on the bounce Liam Rosenior has won just one of his last six top flight games during a short tenure which has also seen the Blues dumped out of the Carabao Cup and Champions League.

An FA cup quarter-final clash with Port Vale should at the very least mean a trip to Wembley for Rosenior but far more pertinent is the daunting challenge of qualifying for the Champions League, the vital importance of which has been brought into sharp focus after Chelsea revealed they had recorded the biggest pre-tax losses in Premier League history.

At some point, maybe very soon, the money hose will have to be turned off to avoid falling foul of Premier League and UEFA spending rules.

And while BlueCo and the litany of directors at the club remain steadfast in their commitment to a perennial rebuild in which hundreds of millions of pounds are spent for no reason that any onlooker can work out, we’ve come up with four incredibly simple moves (short of simply ousting the owners from the football) that would go a long way to fixing their problems while making the books look a little less red.

Sack Liam Rosenior

We feel sorry for him. Sure, he’s a cliche-spouting LinkedIn manager who was recently damned through a defence by Jake Humphrey but we don’t think he’s a bad guy or a bad coach and would have liked nothing more than him to prove doubters wrong at Chelsea as a) he provides superb content, b) we want young, black British coaches to succeed, and c) he provides superb content.

But just like kids sniffing out a newly-qualified teacher after they arrive at school in a freshly laundered suit with dynamic lesson plans and pie-in-the-sky ideas about how they’re going to fix the entire education system, sitting on the desk at the front of the class as The Cool One, the Chelsea players don’t see Rosenior as a proper manager. He’s a guy with some good ideas about football trying far too hard to be their mate.

Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella have said as much during an international break of rebellion for frustrated Chelsea players who evidently saw a path to sustained success under Enzo Maresca before he was taken from them by owners who want a puppet in charge rather than someone who’s going to push back against them.

Having presumably come to terms with the reality of the two personality traits being mutually exclusive, BlueCo would rather a Yes Man than a winner. They’ve sourced one in Rosenior, who understandably feels indebted to them following a promotion so ludicrously above his station that he dare not do anything to harm what will forever be a relationship where he’s pushed and never pulls.

It will be Chelsea’s undoing. They don’t know it yet and probably never will, but the Blues hierarchy desperately need someone who’s going to question and challenge them, to hold them to account for the baffling decisions they make and ensure they don’t remain stuck in their perpetual state of inertia.

Hire Xabi Alonso

Here’s a manager. He had his ideas and stuck with them to his detriment at the biggest club in world football. He wasn’t there to make friends. In Vinicius Junior he made an enemy for life. Under pressure to play the Brazilian he stuck to his guns and was sacked for it. So be it.

Ruben Amorim can attest to the danger in sticking so staunchly to your philosophy, but unlike the former Manchester United boss, Alonso can more than reasonably insist he wasn’t give fair opportunity to make his stick at the Bernabeu. He left with his reputation almost untarnished. It just didn’t work.

The assumption is that he will turn up at Liverpool, but while increasing numbers of Reds fans rail against Arne Slot reports suggest the Anfield bosses are ready to stick by the Dutchman after he led them to the Premier League title last season. Surely Alonso won’t wait if Slot remains in charge beyond the summer.

Key for Chelsea here is Alonso’s availability. No job meaning no compensation should be a significant factor in his appointment, along with the magnificent job he did at Bayer Leverkusen, his knowledge of the Premier League (if a little distant) and experience at the very highest level, both as a player and manager.

Sell Enzo Fernandez

John Obi Mikel has it right: why don’t you just “f*** off”, mate.

The club which paid a British-record fee to sign him and showed him grim “unwavering support” when he had to be reintegrated into the team after teammate Wesley Fofana called out the “uninhibited racism” he displayed in a video posted to social media while on international duty, is now having to watch on as Fernandez as good as sends d*ck pics to Real Madrid in outrageous public flirtation with the La Liga giants.

He’s been quite good for a while having been entirely sh*t at the start and then alright for a bit at Chelsea. He’s rarely played like a £105m footballer. If the club can get a fee anywhere close to that they should be biting hands off.

In a two birds, one stone solution, Chelsea would be getting rid of an absolute d*ckhead and placating Cole Palmer amid interest from Manchester United by making space for him to play in his preferred No.10 role. Reece James and Moises Caicedo behind him, Estevao on the right. It sounds just fine.

Sign Emiliano Martinez

The 427 changes made in defence this season under Maresca and now Rosenior are testament to the doubts they have over the crop of defenders they’ve had available to them and suggests that Chelsea could do with a new centre-back.

But the return of Levi Colwill should prove significant next season – he really grew into his role as leader of that defence before picking up his injury on the eve of the current campaign – and, at risk of sounding like a BlueCo mouthpiece, hope that Josh Acheampong, Jorrel Hato or Mamadou Sarr can develop apace to partner him is not unreasonable.

It’s certainly not the transfer priority, which simply has to be a new goalkeeper to replace perhaps the greatest exponent of false calm in football history, Robert Sanchez.

Emiliano Martinez ticks a lot of boxes. He’s good, first and foremost. Maybe not quite as good as he was, but a damn sight better than anything Chelsea have had since Thibaut Courtois, save for a season of Edouard Mendy. He’s old – a negative for many but a huge positive as an adult in the dressing room-cum-nursery at Stamford Bridge. He’ll be cheap. He’s a leader – it feels like a whole lot of Chelsea’s defensive problems would be solved by someone barking orders from the back. It’s been far too quiet for far too long back there.

And crucially, with Marc Cucurella doing all the heavy lifting in this regard of late, he’s a pr*ck. Chelsea need and love a good pr*ck.