Chelsea need new signings, and quickly, to avoid going backwards this season

Preseason games are rarely a reliable guide to a team’s prospects for the campaign ahead, but Thomas Tuchel’s concerns about Chelsea’s readiness for the new Premier League season are. The alarm bells which started ringing six months ago are only getting louder.

Chelsea’s 4-0 defeat against London rivals Arsenal in Orlando on Saturday, which prompted Tuchel to give a blunt assessment of his squad’s shortcomings, will have no bearing on whether the reigning Club World Cup champions are able to deliver silverware this season.

If Chelsea succeed or fail, it will be down to how they overcome the upheaval that has seen the club’s ownership change for the first time in 19 years, with the Roman Abramovich era coming to an end and a consortium led by L.A. Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly taking charge at Stamford Bridge.

Abramovich has gone, and senior executives Bruce Buck and Marina Granovskaia have followed the Russian through the door, but while staff at every club will always say that they do not focus on off-field matters, the full impact of Chelsea’s boardroom changes are now being felt all the way down to the dressing room. And that is why Tuchel’s frustrations came to the surface following his team’s dismal performance against Arsenal in the Camping World Stadium.

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“I am far from relaxed,” Tuchel said. “We were simply not good enough. We were simply not competitive. I look at the last season and parts of the game where we struggled, parts of the season where we struggled, and then we got sanctioned and players left us and some players are trying to leave us, and this is where it is.

“So we had an urgent appeal for quality players, a huge amount of quality players. We got two quality players [Raheem Sterling and Kalidou Koulibaly], but we are not competitive like this. Unfortunately you could see it today.”

Tuchel’s problem is that Chelsea needed stability and a clear strategy this…