Chelsea legend Joe Cole says the Blues’ current batch of new signings face more pressure being part of Todd Boehly’s rebuild than he did under former owner Roman Abramovich.
Abramovich arrived at Chelsea in 2003 and quickly embarked on an expensive shopping spree, with Cole the sixth of 12 new signings during his debut season, and the former England international would go on to make 281 appearances for the club before leaving in 2010.
Boehly, alongside Clearlake Capital, bought Chelsea from Abramovich in 2022 and, like his predecessor, has not been scared to splash the cash, spending close to £600m on no fewer than 17 new faces.
Speaking to 90min in an exclusive interview, Cole insisted the sort of pressure the current group of signings are facing is far more intense than during his arrival 20 years ago.
“They’re in a lot more difficult of a situation than we were coming in,” Cole explained. “There was uncertainty, but the majority of the emotion was excitement.
“Chelsea were a club that, throughout the 90s and the early 00s that had won a few trophies here and there, played some great football and had some big names, but weren’t really competing with Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool.
Watch 90min’s exclusive interview with Joe Cole as the Chelsea legend talks to Scott Saunders & Harry Symeou about the pressure mounting on Graham Potter, the need to tie Mason Mount down to a new contract, the club’s transfer policy and more.
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“All of a sudden, fans were full of excitement, and there weren’t expectations. It was actually easy because, from a player’s perspective, all you had to do was go in every day and be better than the player I was competing with, get on the pitch and be better than the player I was competing with and win the game.
“But these lads are coming in to a club which is similar in the sense that they’re spending a lot of money and bringing in new players, but the level of expectation from the fans… there’s no bedding-in time. We actually didn’t need bedding-in time, we finished second in our first season, semi-final of the Champions League. We didn’t win anything, but that was seen as successful.
“Fast-forward that season to maybe five years ago, finishing second and not winning a trophy at Chelsea was enough to get the manager the sack.”
With the landscape at Stamford Bridge significantly altered these days, Cole challenged everyone involved, including under-fire manager Graham Potter, to prove their ability to cope with the situation.
“These boys are in a pressure cooker and there’s no stability around them,” Cole continued. “Graham Potter and the people around him, they have to find a way of settling everything down in a storm effectively.
“In that, it’s down to the players ultimately. If I was the manager, I’d be saying: ‘Which one of you lot are going to show me you need to have that shirt for the next game? You’re all great players, go and show me on a day-to-day basis’.
“Which one of these players, and they’re all top players, are going to emerge and be the stars of the next generation?”
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