If Roman had spared the axe he could have won even more
It WAS on a Manchester United team plane returning from Lisbon in the early hours of September 20 2007 that news broke of Jose Mourinho’s first departure from Chelsea.
Such was the sense of disbelief among the United party that manager Sir Alex Ferguson took the unusual step of asking for confirmation from the media sitting at the back of the aircraft.
‘ i can’t believe that could happen,’ said Ferguson at the time.
to recap, Mourinho had won two cups the previous year at Chelsea and back- to- back Premier League titles the two seasons before that.
‘Mourinho and Chelsea caught us all on the hop,’ said Ferguson subsequently. ‘We had to catch up.’
A decade or so on from that journey home from Portugal and some things have not changed at Chelsea. Since that day, a further 10 managers — including Mourinho for a second time and Guus Hiddink twice — have served under club owner Roman Abramovich.
over that same period, United have had four managers, Manchester City and tottenham five each and Arsenal one. in europe, Bayern Munich and Barcelona have each had six coaches since 2007 and even Real Madrid have employed a relatively modest seven. So as we now await what seems to be the inevitable parting of the ways between Chelsea and Antonio Conte, it is clear that the club continue to make mistakes from which they do not learn.
Ferguson always thought that Abramovich and his money — arriving as it did some years before City grew rich — would leave his own club, and everybody else, in the shadow for a number of years. the fact it never happened says more about Chelsea than it does about the rest.
Whenever Chelsea have seemed set to take strides forward on the back of a season of success, they allow themselves to be dragged backward towards everybody else.
Since Abramovich bought Chelsea in June 2003, the club have won five Premier Leagues, one Champions League and seven domestic cups.
that is a successful run whichever way you look at it but would that quintet of league titles have been even more had Chelsea not seen so many managers come and go? Almost certainly it would.
Conte would appear to have contributed to his own problems this time round. Whatever his relationship with striker Diego Costa last season, he allowed that bridge to burn before he was certain he could get the replacement he needed.
this season he has failed to adapt to circumstance and his sense of unease and dissatisfaction has now permeated a playing squad who can no longer remember how to perform on the field. But the underlying issues at Stamford Bridge always remain the same, even if the names involved are different.
Player recruitment and the autonomy — or otherwise — of the manager have long been core issues and until they are settled it is unlikely Chelsea will ever truly reach the kind of hegemony once enjoyed by United and now threatened by City.
Before that season back in 2007-08, Mourinho said he would only ever leave Chelsea if he were sacked. now Conte, just months after winning a Premier League title, is talking about that very same subject.
At Chelsea, many things change but some things stay the same.