Updated 20:01, 11 May 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nStrasbourg head coach Gary O’Neil has pointed the finger at BlueCo bosses<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n
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Gary O\u2019Neil has accused BlueCo, the owners of Chelsea and Strasbourg, of \u201cmessing up\u201d recruitment this season at the Ligue 1 side and questioned the club\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n
The former Wolves and Bournemouth coach was appointed in January after Liam Rosenior moved to Stamford Bridge and has overseen two semi-final defeats in the last month as the club exited the Coupe de France and the Conference League.<\/p>\n
Criticism of the running of the club bears striking similarity to the doubts cast over the current state of Chelsea, with the Blues\u2019 recruitment, managerial instability and general lack of direction among multiple sources of anger from supporters.<\/p>\n
Chelsea are ninth in the Premier League having sacked Rosenior in April after only three months and have not won since March 4 in the league. Fans of both clubs came together in a joint protest against BlueCo \u2013 a consortium led by Behdad Eghbali\u2019s Clearlake Capital and investor Todd Boehly \u2013 outside Stamford Bridge ahead of the Blues\u2019 defeat by Manchester United in April.<\/p>\n
FOLLOW OUR CHELSEA FB PAGE!<\/strong> Latest Blues news, analysis and much more via our dedicated Facebook page<\/strong><\/p>\nREAD MORE: Next Chelsea manager: Three new names on shortlist, Cesc Fabregas update, appointment timeline<\/span><\/span>READ MORE: Date that Chelsea plan to appoint next manager by emerges<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nStrasbourg have won six of their 14 league games under O\u2019Neil\u2019s management but defeats by Nice in April and over two legs against Rayo Vallecano ended their hopes of silverware and with it their last chance of qualifying for Europe next season. The manager believes recruitment during the January transfer window weakened rather than strengthened his squad.<\/p>\n
Striker David Datro Fofana and defender Aaron Anselmino were loaned from Chelsea while the influential Mamadou Sarr, who spent the first half of the season on loan from Stamford Bridge, was recalled to west London. Ecuador international Kendry Paez also had his season-long loan cut short by Chelsea and was immediately loaned out again to River Plate in Argentina.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need two centre-forwards,\u201d said O\u2019Neil following Sunday\u2019s 1-1 draw with Angers, reported by L\u2019Equipe. \u201cThe owners want to give me the means to perform next season, but we have to improve the culture around the club, the quality of the players, and the depth of the squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe messed up in the January transfer window. We weakened instead of improving the squad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of Sunday\u2019s performance, he said: \u201cI am angry. I hope that the players are, too. There are two matches left and they have to show me that they have to level to play with us next season. But we won\u2019t get anywhere playing like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really disappointed me, even more so than on Thursday (against Vallecano). They have to do better. The world of football is full of sharks. They need to know that. I told them that we were playing a final and they didn\u2019t play like they had to.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gary O’Neil has pointed the finger at BlueCo, owners of both Chelsea and Strasbourg, for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7595","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\/7595","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=7595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}