What a surprise, Chelsea are struggling in the league so it’s that time again when the billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich prowls around the Cobham training ground weighing up the manager’s training pedigree like a spider waiting to pounce on a trapped fly. The fly in this case is the young Portuguese manager, Andre Villas-Boas. Seasoned Chelsea players have seen this episode before, just before the manager is sacked as it happened with Carlo Ancelotti.
There was speculation all last week about Villas-Boas’ future, with the Blues languishing in lowly 5th place and seemingly struggling to cement their place in next year’s Champions League, and this can’t be healthy for the squad never mind the manager. With uncertainty surrounding their manager comes uncertainty on the pitch as was shown at the weekend when they lost at Goodison Park against Everton. This performance, however, was shocking as there was a huge chasm between the desire of the manager and his players.
The players were poor, passionless and worst of all for their manager they looked panic-stricken. This was not the football he preaches and for most of the game they looked highly incompetent when passing a ball. Upon just finishing reading, “Special too”, a biography of his rapid rise up the managerial ladder he would have been seemingly more annoyed with the performance more than the result.
Despite the blanket of despair hanging over their Surrey training complex there are positives and reasons not to sack Villas-Boas. This is undoubtedly a season of transition for Chelsea. One criticism of Jose Mourinho’s tenure as Chelsea manager was that he created an “untouchable” environment where the main players felt like they were the best and cannot be affected by anybody.
This legacy lived on all through the reigns of Grant, Scolari, Hiddink and Ancelotti regardless of how brief their stays were. This meant that development was stunted and there was a lack of competition. Didier Drogba’s inflated ego has still not recovered after £50million star man Fernando Torres arrived. Villas-Boas is trying to fade the “old heads” like Lampard and Drogba out and bring through a new generation with Romeu and Cahill. This has been a bold move by a manager only one year older than both of those players. For once Abramovich must show patience to seal the long-term future of his “toy”.
you are right in saying that chelsea need a clear out of their so called stars, villas-boas needs time maybe two seasons at the most to bring in fresh talented players who will play for him, many at the club really believe they are untouchable,it showed this week when they were brought in for a meeting and extra training, they were tweeting and showing their disgust at the thought of having to do a little more, poor sods unable to have the time to screw other players wives, my stomach still turns after all these years remembering ashley coles comments of almost crying when arsenal offered him only £60,000 a week.