Row Z: Chelsea are not a mess, Tottenham are winners and Preston ...

Welcome to Row Z, a new weekly column on The Athletic.

We can probably all agree that football takes itself very seriously, right? Well, here at Row Z, we plan to shine a light on the bonkers side of the game. From clubs to managers, players to organisations, every Friday we’ll bring you the absurdities, the greed, the contradictions, the preposterousness and the oddities of the game we all love… 

Talking of absurd, greedy, contradictory, preposterous oddities, where else can Row Z start but with Chelsea Football Club?

It’s been quite the week for the Blues, who ditched a homegrown hero (that’s Conor Gallagher), signed a former failed loanee (Joao Felix), ostracised last season’s third-top scorer (Raheem Sterling) and have hundreds of millions of pounds worth of signings (Kepa Arrizabalaga, Romelu Lukaku, Ben Chilwell etc) training away from the first team.

“It’s not a mess like it looks from the outside,” head coach Enzo Maresca said with a straight face as work began on installing a third dressing room to house all their players (probably).

You can put together a pretty decent XI from Chelsea’s ‘bomb squad’ of frozen-out players.

It’s an attacking line-up, sure, but would they have more goals in them than the side Chelsea put out against Manchester City at the weekend? Tough call.

“They can even have a 20-year contract,” Maresca added of his outcasts. “It’s not my point. I don’t care.”

He may not care, but Row Z certainly does. The above unwanted 11 players, who seem either destined to depart or are at the very least not welcome, cost Chelsea a combined £336million ($440m) to purchase. Together, they have 38 years left on their Stamford Bridge contracts.

Chelsea are your rambunctious mate at a stag/hen do (or a bachelor/bachelorette party if you like) who just won’t stop buying shots for the ‘banter’. They’re out until 6am, back on the sauce at 9am and no one wants to see them ever again after the weekend is over. Incessant overkill. Make it stop.

You’ve got to admire Chelsea’s social media chutzpah amid the madness.

“Home again,” they tweeted when announcing the return of Joao Felix, who scored four goals in 20 appearances in his underwhelming 2023 loan and was deemed not good enough by Mauricio Pochettino.

They were at it again when posting an emotional, heartstring-tugging video of Gallagher’s 18-year Chelsea career from boy to senior captain.

“You will forever be a blue,” Chelsea captioned at the end of the video, forgetting to add “until we make you train away from the first team and force you out the club to meet profitability and sustainability regulations.”

Conor Gallagher has completed a permanent transfer to Atletico Madrid. We wish Conor the very best as he begins a new chapter in his career. ????

— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) August 21, 2024

All the funny stuff meant that Maresca’s decision to make Enzo Fernandez captain for the City game was largely glossed over.

The French Football Federation said in July it would file a complaint after Fernandez posted a video on Instagram that showed him and his Argentina team-mates singing offensive chants about French players of African descent after their Copa America victory.

His Chelsea team-mate Wesley Fofana called it “uninhibited racism” on X, albeit he has since accepted an apology from Fernandez.

Maresca said the racism matter was “finished” and that Fernandez had recognised his “mistake”.

A discrimination and abuse mission statement on the club’s website reads: “Chelsea takes all forms of discriminatory behaviour very seriously and believes all forms of discriminatory chanting, including antisemitism, homophobic, biphobic and transphobic chanting to be abhorrent behaviour that has no place in football.”

But if you’re a good midfielder, it doesn’t matter as much.

Tottenham Hotspur are officially the best-run club in English men’s football. Hooray!

That’s according to Fair Game, an organisation that campaigns for an end to financial inequality in the sport, wants football to be governed with transparency and fairness and aims to put clubs at the heart of their communities. Noble cause — might take a while.

Anyway, in a press release penned by a Mr D Levy (this is not true), Fair Game’s annual index measuring financial sustainability, governance, equality and fan engagement has Spurs top of the pile.

Best club in England for financial sustainability, governance, equality and fan engagement, you’ll never sing that.

Just to really hammer home that the award has nothing to do with coherent transfer plans or roofs that don’t have holes in, second on the list were Manchester United.

Talking of ending financial inequality and bringing clubs closer to their communities, Manchester City unveiled their new dairy partner this week.

Yili Group, apparently Asia’s largest producer of dairy, are, as City posted on their website, the club’s Official Dairy Partner, with capital letters to make you shudder.

Clearly having learned nothing from Hellmann’s mayonnaise mistake, Yili has already emblazoned Jack Grealish all over its website.

It says it will “uphold the spiritual core of passion and love” as part of its new partnership.

It’s literally a yoghurt, calm down.

There was just 22 days between Aston Villa striker Jhon Duran performing an Irons-shaped cross on social media to indicate he wanted to move to West Ham United, and then scoring the winning goal for Villa against the Hammers last weekend.

Duran, who had publicly welcomed the West Ham rumours, celebrated the winning goal in front of Villa’s fans by pointing at himself and then to the ground, indicating he was staying.

Given he was at the London Stadium, someone should probably ask which club he meant.

To the Championship now, and Watford are already onto their third manager of the season.

Nope, sorry, force of habit, Preston North End are already onto their third manager of the season.

After six weeks of pre-season training, three new signings and a friendly victory over Fiorentina at Deepdale, Ryan Lowe left following the opening-day defeat to Sheffield United, one of the favourites to win the league. Timing is everything.

“If we can get off to a good start I’ll be pleased,” Lowe had said before the game. “It’s a course of 46.”

Sadly for Lowe, it was a course of one, with director Peter Ridsdale (no comment) deciding that, after almost three years and exactly 125 matches in charge, the first game of the new campaign was the first final straw.

Mike Marsh was appointed as caretaker but, after a 3-0 defeat at Swansea City, he decided he didn’t fancy it either, so after five days in charge he left. Ridsdale said Marsh didn’t want to apply for the job “or take the club forward”.

“We identified that we wanted Paul to be the man to take us forward,” Ridsdale, clearly a man looking forward, told the club’s website after appointing Paul Heckingbottom three days later.

Preston host Luton Town on Saturday when they will, according to Opta, become the first club since 1975 to have three different managers for their first three league games of the season (also Preston, with Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Harry Catterick).

Rumours that Heckingbottom hasn’t yet cancelled his September holiday to Tenerife are unconfirmed.

“All Preston North End fans can be really excited about the season ahead,” Ridsdale added.

Maybe make that the game ahead.

(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

Tim Spiers is a football journalist for The Athletic, based in London. He joined in 2019 having previously worked at the Express & Star in Wolverhampton. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimSpiers