Chelsea legend blames poor form on lack of 'experience'

James Shearman

• Updated: 2 Nov 2023 22:35 GMT
• 3 min read

Chelsea legend Marcel Desailly thinks that Chelsea are struggling because of a lack of 'experience'.

The Blues continued their rebuild under new ownership in the summer, spending over €650 million on 13 players.

And the club stuck with their strategy of signing unproven youngsters, despite a disappointing last campaign.

The likes of Cole Palmer, Moises Caicedo, Lesley Ugochukwu and Nicolas Jackson were brought to Stamford Bridge.

READ: Mourinho made Mohamed Salah CRY before Chelsea exit

While the new signings have shown signs of promise, the Blues are having another difficult season.

Head coach Mauricio Pochettino has not been able to fix the problems that Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Frank Lampard had in the 2022-23 campaign.

Desailly does not blame Pochettino, instead pointing the finger at the club's recruitment policy.

Desailly on Chelsea's struggles

"So it’s very hard to criticise," Desailly told Get French Football News. "The only thing that I’d say though is that it is an error of communication.

"They are carried away by the potential that each player that they have bought has, because they have forgotten about one element.

"Knowing that, to play football at the highest level, to attain what we call in French 'la culture de la gagne', the winning mentality, you need experience. Nascent talent is never enough to presume immediate performance.

"And that’s the only thing where I’d say they’ve made a mistake, where they keep thinking, with the coach Pochettino, "no, this year we’ll be title challengers with the team that we have”. Right from the start of the season, you could see that they can’t be title challengers, it was obvious.

"But they have put together players of great potential and have positioned themselves in terms of business, because if they didn’t buy the players now for a little above value, they wouldn’t have been able to buy them later."