Nice one Roman, that’s £55m you’ve spunked on sacking managers
JOHN TERRY, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba bounce around the room on spacehoppers wearing huge foam hands.
They point the fingers like a scolding teacher in time to the music: “Din-din-din ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!”
Roman Abramovich spins the steel wheels with a wild grin plastered across his face, pumping up the volume to the max.
Behind him, a laptop screen’s dim light projects onto a wall. Football Manager is loaded. “What do you want to do next, Mr Abramovich,” pleads the game.
This may, or may not, have happened in real life.
But that is what Chelsea Football Club seems to be to Roman Abramovich – a game.
Why else undermine manager after manager and turn the Stamford Bridge job into Mission Impossible?
Why else interfere in football matters and buy players your manager didn’t want?
And why else spend £15million on tempting Andres Villas-boas away from Porto only to show no faith in his philosophy and sack him at the first hint of crisis nine months later?
That’s £55m spunked on sacking managers now by the Russian. Who next to play roulette with their managerial career?
Someone who fancies a pay-off a few months later presumably.
But whoever becomes Chelsea’s eighth manager in nine years will face the same problems. layers with too much power. Players past their best. Expensive flops.
And an impatient, interfering owner who seems to have no problem with his left-back firing air rifles at the work experience kid.
It’s a club sick to the core.
But to Roman the cure is always to sack the manager. Even Carlo Ancelotti – who won the Double!
Yet who signed Fernando Torres, who is averaging 1.6 goals per manager?
And on the other hand who signed one of Chelsea’s best players, Juan Mata? Oh yeah, AVB – a man who knows a bit about football, having won the league in Portugal and the Europa League.
Some are defending Abramovich. It’s his money. It’s his club. And AVB made mistakes.
All true. But what does
PAbramovich know about football? What does he know about building a club – really building a club. Creating a legacy, a long-term cycle of domination. The answer is nothing. A new broom needs to be taken to Chelsea’s squad.
The witches’ coven of ageing players that has sent a string of managers to the ducking stool needs to be pensioned off. If evidence was needed of the trigger-happy stupidity of the Russian, check out this bad boy. AVB’S record at Chelsea was played 40, won 19, drew 11, lost 10.
When Roberto Mancini took over at Manchester City his record in his first 40 games was won 20, drew 9, lost 11.
Virtually identical then. et City’s moneybags controlled the urge to knee-jerk and now look – there’s an FA Cup in the trophy cabinet and they’re favourites to win the league.
Amazing what a bit of stability can do, eh?
Roman Abramovich could break the mould and give a manager time and space next time around.
Or he could just keep throwing money about, demanding instant results and getting his chopper out at the drop of a hat.
I know what my money is on.
Y