Florent Malouda says what most are thinking, but Chelsea don’t see it – Talk Chelsea

Chelsea’s current issues for me are pretty obvious, and the more I look around, hear, and read, most Chelsea fans think the same thing.

For me, Mauricio Pochettino isn’t tactically good enough as a manager and needs to be replaced in the summer. But the problems are bigger and wider than that, with the main one being the naive squad rebuild.

I have seen SO many pundits, experts, former pros, former Chelsea players, and SO many Chelsea fans saying the same thing. But the decision makers at Chelsea do not see to see it, or if they do, they are digging their heels in, ignoring it, and foolishly backing their own decisions.

I’ll let former Chelsea player Florent Malouda explain it though, because he is someone who has actually played the game at a top level and for a successful Chelsea team, and he certainly knows what he is talking about here.

In a recent interview, Malouda said:

“I was at Stamford Bridge watching the Leicester game in the FA Cup, Chelsea were playing with a lot of intensity, and everything looked brilliant until it wasn’t. It only takes one mistake to knock the confidence out of this Chelsea team and then the chaos starts.

“The Chelsea players need to develop a capacity to control their emotions on the pitch. They don’t have the emotional balance that allows you to keep control of the game, and that is down to the composition of the squad. When you chose to focus on a project with mostly young players, you will always find this inconsistency because all of these players are learning at the same time.

“I think a player like Real Madrid’s Toni Kroos is the type of target that Chelsea should be looking to bring in this summer. He is an experienced player with a lot of pedigree. Chelsea need one or two players like Kroos. Players who have such a high football IQ that they can analyse every scenario on the pitch, take the right decisions and lead the team. This is the type of profile I would be looking to bring into the club over the summer. We need experienced, ambitious players who want to be part of a very exciting Chelsea project next year.”

So in a nutshell, he is saying that Chelsea have signed inexperienced, raw, young players, which is a fact, and they have ignored proven experience and quality to balance it up, which is also a fact.

This is why I say the squad rebuild has been naive at best. And as I say above, I have seen SO many people say exactly the same thing. We lack leaders, strong mentalities, and players who have been there and done it. Balance is SO important, and we don’t have it, and as Malouda explains above, this has been so clear and evident in games this season.

So if we can all see it, why can’t the decision makers? As I say, it seems like they are just going all out to back their own decisions made in recruitment and do not want to accept that it’s failing. I’m sure the data says that we should be better off than where we are right now (it does, as Pochettino desperately drew on that too in a recent interview). But the fact is, whether we should be better in the league right now or not, if we had been smarter in our recruitment and not ignored quality experience, then I truly believe we would be much better than we are now, and better than any data might be claiming too.

For me, and for SO many others, it is THAT simple, and Chelsea NEED to correct it this summer.