Working for an owner who goes through managers like the real Ronaldo goes through pies, it was never going to be easy for AVB at Chelsea. This when coupled with the fact that the side have never really gotten over the departure of the special one and the spine of the team that has served the Blues so well in the past is now the wrong side of thirty means that the manager is facing somewhat of a thankless task this season.
With the risk of sounding like Arsene Wenger, Chelsea are certainly at the beginning of a period of transition, yet should the club encounter six trophyless seasons, they would almost certainly at the same time encounter six different managers. In Abramovich, Chelsea have a chairman who has poured a great deal of his personal wealth into the club, and they have to be thankful for that. Yet when he begins to interfere with transfers or team selection, a real problem arises.
As Mourinho once said ‘if Abramovich helped me out in training we would be bottom of the league, if I helped him in his business he would be bankrupt.’ Mourinho was certainly not one to tolerate meddling lightly, and the arrival of Shevchenko spelt the beginning of the end.
After the departure of Jose, managers came and went as quickly as Kim Kardashian’s marriage, yet in AVB Chelsea seemed to have a long term plan and threw all their backing behind the young manager.
AVB meanwhile, had some tough decisions to make with regards to the first team. The age old debate of which striker – Drogba or Torres was dealt with in the first game when AVB nailed his flag to the Torres mast, and made it clear that Drogba and Anelka were no longer automatic first choice starters – the manager has since shown that is not afraid to make big decisions, and is willing to drop anyone who is not performing, including the under fire Spaniard.
To his credit, Torres has looked much sharper this season, and despite missing a chance at Old Trafford which I’m sure had Harry Redknapp thinking his mother could have scored it, AVB and Chelsea can take heart in the semi-revival of Torres, and especially when on the field with Mata and Ramires, the Spaniard does not resemble the one legged donkey of last season quite so much.
Although most Chelsea fans would berate Torres for his ill-advised remarks on the age and pace of the squad, there is some truth to those comments, and his form aside, the Chelsea team as a whole looks lacking in more than one area. It is an unfortunate fact for AVB that the three players who were key to the very height of Chelsea’s success – Terry, Lampard and Drogba, are now the wrong side of thirty, and cannot perform to the level they once did week in, week out.
It has, unsurprisingly, been Frankie Lampard who has come in for most of the criticism here, and after a couple of less than brilliant games, the media bandwagon was gathering pace quicker than Usain Bolt in its haste to tell the world Lamps was finished at the top level. Shockingly, this was not the case, and even Lampard himself would have to admit that a player may not be able to play every game, and to keep them at the height of their powers for as long as possible a rest is needed from time to time.