Chelsea's biggest mistake this season was sacking manager Thomas Tuchel in September. The second was appointing Graham Potter to replace the Champions League-winning coach at Stamford Bridge.

There have been plenty of other bad choices along the way by the club's new owners -- a consortium led by Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly. Spending £47.5 million to sign a declining Raheem Sterling from Manchester City, then recruiting £10m striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Barcelona on Tuchel's recommendation, six days before firing the coach, are other rash decisions which have done little to help the team.

But if dismissing Tuchel just seven games into the season was an ill-judged move, it was compounded by the hiring of Brighton & Hove Albion manager Potter to take over. It was an appointment made by an inexperienced and naïve Chelsea hierarchy that believed he could fit the model adopted at Boehly's Dodgers baseball franchise onto a Premier League club.

Boehly and his fellow investors have discovered in a very short space of time that football is, quite literally, a whole different ballgame. At the Dodgers, Boehly hired Dave Roberts as manager in 2015, where he remains as the longest-serving coach at the franchise since the 1970s.

Potter was supposed to be a similar long-term appointment -- a coach who would synergise with the new ownership group's blueprint for recruitment and style -- but Boehly and co. have now discovered the hard way what former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson meant when he said that "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."