Chelsea's veteran Brazil international defender Thiago Silva has attempted to explain the club's problems, while warning they could be repeated next season if the club doesn't learn from its mistakes.
Chelsea bowed tamely out of the Champions League on Tuesday night after a 2-0 defeat at home to Real Madrid confirmed a 4-0 aggregate defeat. Meanwhile, the club currently sits 12th in the Premier League, closer to the relegation zone than a place in Europe for next season.
This follows Frank Lampard's return as temporary coach after being sacked in 2021, after first Thomas Tuchel and his replacement, Graham Potter were shown the door.
The south-London club spent 300 million pounds on players in January. This lifted the spending since Todd Boehly took over the club from Roman Abramovich to 600 million, but according to Silva, all that has done further complicated matters.
"The club is going through a tough patch, it was all a bit vague at the beginning, then there was a change of ownership and a lot of players came in," explained Silva.
The defender said the squad was now so big that the club "even had to extend the dressing room as it wasn't big enough for all the players."
He believes a bloated squad poses as many problems as it resolves. "We've got great players in the squad, but the flipside is that someone is always going to be annoyed, because not everyone can play. The coach can only pick 11 players, yet there are 30-odd here."
"That's an issue, isn't it?" said Silva, who refused to blame Chelsea's season on their coaches.
"Everybody talks too much about replacing managers. I think that as players, we also have to take responsibility," said the 38-year-old.
"We have had three managers this season, plus a fourth with (interim coach) Bruno, where we failed to win. We have lost against Madrid, and with Lampard, we have failed to win. Everybody is talking about the manager but we must look at what has been done wrong and try to change," insisted the defender, who added the club had to learn from the problems, "so we don't make the same mistakes next season."
