I spoke to my neighbour this morning, who happens to be a Liverpool fan. He was devastated and said to me, \u201ccan\u2019t believe you\u2019ve taken Alonso from us, I\u2019m absolutely gutted!\u201d<\/p>\n
THAT is how a serious club operates. We\u2019ve hired an established big name manager, and we\u2019re actually labelling him a manager rather than a head coach. It\u2019s an incredible coup by the club, and the owners deserve massive credit for getting this done and convincing a name of that calibre to come to the club in what has been a very turmoil time.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to credit them when they do something good like this, just as we will all call them out for the things they do wrong. They have a LONG way to go to convince the fan base on the whole still, but this is a very good start.<\/p>\n
Alonso as MANAGER will have much more control than his predecessors had, as reported. He will be putting forward transfer targets, and I believe he has already been doing this, with an emphasis on new centre backs. He will have a say on player sales, who he wants to stay in his squad. And again, as reported yesterday, he\u2019s communicated that he ideally wants to keep both Marc Cucurella and Enzo Fernandez, and will be speaking to them both directly in an attempt to get them to stay. He understands their positions though and it wasn\u2019t a \u201cI\u2019ll only join if Cucu and Enzo are staying\u201d conversation.<\/p>\n
The players are absolutely buzzing that Alonso is coming in, and it\u2019s already had an effect on the mood in the camp, with some players who had told their agents they definitely wanted out this summer, changing their stance already \u2013 not all of them though.<\/p>\n
Chelsea worked hard to land Alonso, and it\u2019s a real statement of intent from the owners. The decision to announce him now before the end of the season is also a smart move and has provided a real pick me up not just for the players, but for the fan base too.<\/p>\n
Alonso will now get to work (not officially) for next season, and he will be speaking with the decision makers at the club in regards to transfer targets. We are expecting now to see more new names coming out in the next days and weeks. We will bring you any names we get given of course.<\/p>\n
Now is the time to follow up this good start of hiring a big name manager with a perfect summer. They have to sign the right players in the right positions, sell the right players, get a top permanent front of shirt sponsor in, and work on building back that Chelsea culture and fan connection ahead of a pinnacle season running into their fifth year as Chelsea owners.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve also heard that sponsors that Chelsea have been in talks with have already been very encouraged by the Alonso news, so that will help there too.<\/p>\n
And further to this, SPTC Sources<\/strong><\/em> are hearing that Sebastian Parilla, Alonso\u2019s former assistant a Bayer Leverkusen, is expected to join him at Chelsea. There\u2019s been talk of Thiago Alcantara linking up with Alonso, but we understand he\u2019s expected to stay at Barcelona.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fantastic start, now time to follow that up. But well done to the owners and all those involved in getting this deal done, and getting it done in good time too! WE MOVE!<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spoke to my neighbour this morning, who happens to be a Liverpool fan. He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10704","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=10704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n