\n<\/p>\n
Chelsea fans will probably still scarcely be able to believe that the club has pulled off such a huge coup, given the situation it currently finds itself in.<\/span><\/p>\n Discontent among the support has been simmering for some time now and has often threatened to boil over into full-blown mutiny, with their rage understandably directed at the club’s beleaguered ownership. There have been sporadic protests against BlueCo and hundreds of fans gathered again on Wembley Way ahead of kick-off on Saturday, carrying a banner that read “BlueCo OUT! We want our Chelsea back”.<\/span><\/p>\n Appointing someone of Alonso’s calibre has immediately appeased many of those dissenting voices. The 44-year-old could be transformative, as he looks to foster a culture of togetherness and help a squad packed with talent fulfil its huge potential with his tactical nous.<\/span><\/p>\n It will be seen as a massive positive, too, that his title is ‘manager’ rather than ‘head coach’ – reportedly the decision of the club; this suggests that he will have far more influence than the string of coaches that came before him. The hierarchy must now deliver on the promise of <\/span>backing the tactician with quality, ready-made signings in the transfer market<\/span>. He showed what he can do with the right tools at his disposal during his time with Leverkusen, bringing in Xhaka and more in the summer of 2023 before remarkably dethroning serial Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich to claim the Werkself’s first-ever title.<\/span><\/p>\n All of this means that, despite another hugely disappointing campaign, Chelsea fans will be in a buoyant mood as the season comes to a close ahead of what promises to be a seismic summer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chelsea fans will probably still scarcely be able to believe that the club has pulled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}