Stamford Bridge mood darkens against Benitez and the misfiring Torres
MIDWAYthrough the second half, Chelsea fans in the Matthew Harding Stand started singing for Jose Mourinho. It’s getting messy again.
Then they screamed for Demba Ba, scorer of two on his debut in the FA Cup at Southampton on Saturday, to replace the woeful Fernando Torres. It was tempting to join in.
By the end they were singing for Roberto Di Matteo, winner of the Champions League and FA Cup inside three crazy months last season.
As champions of Europe, Chelsea began the season with the chance to win a trophy at every turn. Community Shield, European Super Cup, European Cup, Premier League, FA Cup, Capital One Cup and Fifa Club World Cup were all within their grasp.
One by one the silverware is slipping away. Even the Capital One Cup appears to be beyond them after they were beaten at home in the first leg by Michael Laudrup’s rhythmic Swansea side.
Michu, the man Arsene Wenger infamously referred to as the striker “bombed out by clubs in Spain”, and substitute Danny Graham are meddling in Chelsea’s affairs and putting Swansea within sight of next month’s final at Wembley.
This is not going according to plan for a club who might already have won three trophies this season.
Even the European Cup will be taken out of the Stamford Bridge cabinet soon as it begins Uefa’s trophy tour around England before it settles at Wembley on May 25.
Roman Abramovich wanted it all, spending lavishly in the summer by recruiting £80 million worth of talent for Di Matteo to destroy the opposition.
Abramovich turned to Rafa Benitez when it went wonky in November but Chelsea are already running out of competitions under their interim manager.
The absentee owner expects his £1bn investment to win every trophy. Chelsea had blown the defence of the Champions League by the time Benitez arrived, but the warning signs are starting to glow.
Chelsea can forget about winning the Premier League for a fourth time under Abramovich this season, they were beaten in the Community Shield, won by Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti, in August, and that was quickly followed by the 4-1 defeat by Atletico Madrid in the European Super Cup.
Benitez’s big chance was the Fifa Club World Cup in Yokohama, a competition he had previously won with Inter when he replaced Mourinho in 2010.
As Chelsea supporters prepare to acknowledge a decade under Abramovich’s ownership, they appreciate his obsession with silverware. That’s the way things are when the owner is signing some of the biggest players in world football.
Pep Guardiola, a managerial target when his New York sabbatical ends, won 14 of the 18 trophies he competed for at Barcelona. He won three La Liga titles and two European Cups but he snaffled Super Cups, Supercopas de España and Fifa Club World Cups as a matter of course.
That’s what the big clubs do and Benitez can expect a sharp reminder that winning silverware is all that counts at this club.
As for Torres’ dismal performance – Wednesday night was a first for the striker.
Not his first shambolic showing in a Chelsea shirt, by any means, but the first time the crowd at Stamford Bridge treated his display with the respect it deserved.
Or lack of, rather, with first cheers going around the ground when the fourth official held up his No 9 in red on the electronic board, and then jeers as the striker made his way from the field with as much vigour as he had put in at any other point of the night. – Daily Mail