Chelsea - Something Not Right .....

[Wolfy3769]

Oklah.. give him consolation.. he got to win WC without really playing hor when he at pool

 

 

maybe spain win WC because they nvr play him often enough.....

[Kopites]

Good reading for Chekski fans.

 

Chelsea FC: The Football Facility

Posted 21/02/11 10:43EmailPrintSave

 

JOHN NICHOLSON

 

 

Chelsea haven't been very good for very long. Not really.

 

For most of my life the blues have been pretty much also-rans in terms of league performance. The 1969/1970 side was very good and finished third, ten years later they finished fourth.

 

But mostly they've been a bit rubbish. From the mid 70s to the early 80s Chelsea spent seven out of nine seasons in the old second division.

 

The early years of the Premier League were similarly mediocre. It's really only been the last twelve or thirteen years which have seen them consistently challenge for honours. Admittedly if you're 25 years old this will seem like most of your life

 

So what?

 

Well, exactly, so what. It doesn't matter. Chelsea are a different club since Roman Abramovich's money turned them from also-rans into champions, and yet in many ways it's the same old Chelsea. In the last 25 years, the club has had 15 managers. Instability has always been a way of life at Chelsea even in less volatile, less Mammon-dominated eras.

 

Chelsea's decline this season is all relative but Chelsea seem to be judged to a different standard, not so much by the fans but by their owner. If the manager doesn't win the league for the Blues, they are sacked. This seems a bit rash to those of us with longer memories of the club that would have bitten off its own legs for a top three finish.

 

However, Abramovich has merely accelerated a Chelsea managerial tradition.

 

This strikes most observers as madness. You can be the best manager who exists on earth and still get the sack at Chelsea. While the more yuppie types amongst their fan base might be fond of phrases such as 'failure is not an option,' 'winning is everything,' 'he who dares wins' and 'this time next year we'll be millionaires, Rodney,' but back in the real world, football is notoriously reluctant to be bent to the will of a very rich man. You can buy a lot of success but not perpetual success. Surely, Abramovich realises that?

 

Even though Carlo Ancelotti was fabulously successful last year, that already appears to have been wiped from his balance sheet. He has no capital from it and by common consent seems likely to be out the door in the summer, if not sooner, especially if the mighty FC Copenhagen do an Everton on them.

 

While Carlo bears the look and body language of a man who really would rather like to be paid off as soon as possible, the failures of this season are much more down to the club than to him. The failure to recruit talent when in a position of strength; the failure to produce top flight-ready players from within their own ranks; the reliance on a core of older players who were always, at some point, going to suffer the vicissitudes of age are all the fault of their owner not of Ancelotti as the Italian clearly knows but cannot say.

 

Now with 'only' the Champions League left to contend for and the odds of them winning it lengthening, the revolving managers' doors will soon be spinning again and once more the roller-coaster will begin with another poor sap in charge on the win or bust Chelsea charabanc.

 

All of which gives the rest of us a lot of fun and all of which is making Chelsea a bit of a laughing stock, even by their own impressive standards. Most clubs would be delighted to have Ancellotti as manager and would accept that not every season is going to be a double winning one. But not Chelsea, or at least, not their owner.

 

How long can this go on? Don't the fans mind? Are they fed up of this scorched earth managerial policy? Doesn't it make the success achieved feel all the more plastic when it seems to counts for so little with the owner? When you win a league title it should be a major foundation stone in the construction of an empire, not a disposable honour which is all but forgotten within months.

 

It's one thing to get rid of a manager who hasn't moved the club on or who is just downright rubbish, quite another to sack one who has just won two out of the four trophies available so recently.

 

The fact that Chelsea hasn't won the Champions League by pursuing this policy should surely tell Abramovich that it doesn't work. You can't just go through every manager available hoping he'll be the one and then sacking him when he doesn't do it right away. Well, you can, but it just proves you're mad.

 

This lack of stability and ruthless attitude means that from the outside Chelsea FC doesn't seem like a football club; it seems more like a football facility. It seems cold and more like a multi-national corporation than a football club. The sacking of Ray Wilkins was emblematic of that. Here was a much-liked coach, an ex-club captain, noble servant and thoroughly decent bloke.

 

Yet regardless, he's dumped mid-season without warning, against the manager's wishes, as though he was little more than the YTS lad (does YTS still exist?).....and to what end? What has been gained by that? Nothing.

 

It's tempting to believe that had Abramovich not become jealous of Jose Mourinho, all the European success he apparently craves would already be lining the trophy cabinet courtesy of his managerial brilliance. That must hurt every Chelsea fan. It must also make them hold Abramovich in some contempt, surely. It certainly makes the rest of us feel like that. You let Mourinho go, the greatest manager of his generation. You fools. How can anyone have any respect for the club hierarchy on the back of such a monumentally stupid decision?

 

Not that Roman cares and perhaps it is only the hiring and firing, along with pursuit of the Champions League trophy, that keeps him interested. Perhaps if they did win it, he'll lose any fascination he's got for football and spend a few years doing something else. Perhaps then Chelsea will return to being what they traditionally always have been - also-rans.

 

 

 

 

[Kopites]

Deleted : Double post.

Edited February 21, 2011 by Kopites