Fans can make a big noise but results decide everything...
WHEN Thomas Tuchel walked out at Stamford Bridge for his first Chelsea game on Wednesday night, there was a four-dayold banner in the ground. A supporters’ group had mustered £1,000 for it and it was hanging for Frank Lampard’s last game as the club’s manager, an FA Cup win against Luton a week ago.
‘In Frank we trust. Then. Now. Forever,’ it read, and in its overwrought sentimentality and misplaced sense of entitlement and importance, it was unmistakeably the work of fans of a leading English soccer club.
Their views about Lampard aren’t of much consequence. He saw it for one match, and was sacked the next day.
Fans don’t wield significant influence at England’s big clubs. They can apply pressure on a controversial ticketing policy, as the supporters of Liverpool once did, but when it comes to appointing managers and signing players, fans can make noise but they are ignored.
The Chelsea example is an extreme instance.
Since Roman Abramovich bought the club, he has sacked managers who were popular, like Roberto di Matteo and Carlo Ancelotti, and he has hired ones that were deeply unpopular, like Avram Grant and Rafael Benitez.
He doesn’t care what supporters think, but in his determination to keep spending millions and changing managers, he behaves with the impetuousness of a fan himself.
And, like all supporters, Abramovich wants his team to win. That brings trophies and acclaim, and it helps a billionaire with a close friend who is a despised autocrat to maintain his reputation in the west.
But the particular benefits to Abramovich of a winning Chelsea team stem from the application of the core determinant in all sports: results.
It doesn’t matter about the code,
the status of the game, or the identity of the manager: results explain everything.
This is the truth that those involved with teams, especially higher profile ones, must never forget.
Frank Lampard was adored by Chelsea fans but, long before he was sacked by Abramovich, many of them thought he was out of his depth in the job.
There was growing evidence to support this and his reputation couldn’t save him.
Change sports and the power of results does not diminish.
Chelsea are a leading team, in one of richest professional leagues in the world, and with a voluble
fanbase that has actively agitated against managers in the past.
The external environment in Gaelic games is very different – a fact that many involved in the sport treasure.
But results remain the most valuable currency, and that’s why low-level grumbling in Kilkenny has meant the future of Brian Cody as manager has become a talking point this winter.
The county won an improbable Leinster hurling championship but then collapsed in the second half of the All-Ireland semi-final against Waterford.
It wasn’t a disastrous season, and it came at the end of a year disrupted by the pandemic, but it was also the season after Cody had led the county to a surprising appearance in the 2019 final.
Their win against Limerick in the semi-final, and in particular a terrific first-half effort, caused significant shock, which showed how a county that Cody had made unbeatable through much of the 2000s had been caught by the pack, and overtaken.
The years since their last win in 2014 have seen the team in various states of rebuilding, and one suspects that there would have been little talk around Cody’s future in recent weeks were it not for news of Colin Fennelly’s supposed year out.
The departure, if even for one season, of an experienced, quality forward from a squad that is light in that area, has been interpreted as a sign that not all is well in Cody’s reign.
Reports persist of local dissatisfaction with the preparation of the squad for the demands of the modern game, which has been reshaped by Limerick in the past three seasons. And a manager that has led his county to 10 All-Irelands in 22 seasons is now vulnerable in some eyes.
It should be said there is no feeling of widespread impatience with the most successful manager in the history of Irish sport, but that there is detectable frustration at all underlines, yet again, that his game, all games, are about the next win, not the last one.
Bear this in mind when the national soccer team resume action in seven weeks’ time.
Stephen Kenny will be under pressure if Ireland lose away to Serbia and, until he starts winning matches, not even his most ardent supporters can protect him from an unavoidable fact.
Results decide everything.